Women suffer more from lack of clean water

That is why on the 2014 International Women’s Day, WaterAid is reflecting again on the one in three women around the world who are still without clean, safe water and sanitation.A statement issued by the international NGO and made available to Daily Trust noted: “WaterAid is working hard to inspire change for the many women […]

That is why on the 2014 International Women’s Day, WaterAid is reflecting again on the one in three women around the world who are still without clean, safe water and sanitation.
A statement issued by the international NGO and made available to Daily Trust noted: “WaterAid is working hard to inspire change for the many women in some of the world’s poorest countries who still bear most of the burden caused by a lack of safe water and sanitation – long hours spent trekking for water, ill health and vulnerability if they must daefecate in the open.”
It lamented that women and girls who must spend hours a day seeking water cannot spend that time at school or in income-generating activities.
Eliminating that burden, and giving girls the time and opportunity to focus on education, will ultimately lead to healthier, better-educated families, with a better chance of working their way out of extreme poverty, it added.
Barbara Frost, CEO of WaterAid International said: “As we mark International Women’s Day at WaterAid, we are focusing on the 1.25 billion women and girls around the world without proper toilets, and the associated burdens. This is a crisis of massive proportion in health, in education, in economic development and in gender equality that simply cannot continue.”
In his contribution, Michael Ojo, Country Representative of WaterAid Nigeria, pointed out: “The situation in Nigeria for women lacking these basic services is very critical.  Every year, nearly 100,000 mothers in Nigeria will lose a child under the age of five because of a disease brought about due to a lack of access to safe sanitation and clean water. The trauma suffered by these mothers through the loss of a child is just one of the other, but most tragic ways that a lack of sanitation affects women.”
Nearly seven in 10 women in Nigeria have no access to a safe toilet. To put this in perspective, there are 297 million women across sub-Saharan Africa lacking access to safe and adequate sanitation and 54 million of these are in Nigeria. Of those in Nigeria, 17 million make open defecation. For these women, finding a place to go to the toilet over the course of a year, takes up over 3 billion hours.
The lack of such essential services creates a massive crisis for developing countries like Nigeria such as undermining health systems, education, economic development, and progress on gender equality. Poor water, sanitation and hygiene is costing Nigeria around N455 billion, 1.3 per cent of its GDP each year.
Overcoming the crisis requires national, state and local governments to implement the commitments they have made on sanitation and water.
The Nigerian Government has pledged to increase the rates of sanitation access from 31 per cent currently to 65 per cent, and water access from 61 per cent to 75 per cent by 2015.
These are very ambitious targets, particularly considering that Nigeria is one of the few African countries where rates of access to sanitation are actually falling, from 37 per cent of the population in 1990 to 31 per cent, today.