New findings have indicated that as countries forge a head in development, adequate sanitation services are being undermined given the current population.
A new report ‘Off-track, off-target’ that has been released by the international charity organisation WaterAid, suggest that there are more people in the world today lacking adequate sanitation services than in 1990.
“Unless urgent action is taken, nearly all governments in Sub-Saharan African will fail to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) pledge they made to halve the proportion of people without sanitation by 2015,” The report reads in parts.
The report also suggests that it will take over two centuries for Sub-Saharan Africa to meet its sanitation MDG target.
It also indicates that only 20 countries in the region are on track to meet the water MDG target by 2015 that has massive consequences for child mortality in Africa.
“Despite Rwanda’s remarkable progress on WASH with coverage figures gradually increased over the years, spending is still low and falls short of the E-thekwini Declaration and diarrheal diseases are a leading cause of death in children under age five every year caused by poor water and sanitation,” the reports suggests.
The report states that to get the sanitation and water MDGs back on track, countries in sub-Saharan Africa need to spend at least 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on WASH services.
The report also calls on donor countries to double global aid flows to water, sanitation and hygiene by prioritising an additional US$10 billion per year.
The report also identifies that it is Africa’s poorest people who are being left behind; poor people in Africa are five times less likely to have access to adequate sanitation and over 15 times more likely to practise open defecation than Africa’s rich.
In a press release, WaterAid urged governments to tackle this inequity through better targeting of water and sanitation resources and services to the poor.
The WaterAid report highlights that the shortfall in water and sanitation services costs Sub-Saharan African countries around 5% of GDP each year ($47.7 billion in 2009), more than is provided in development aid to the entire continent ($47.6 billion in 2009).
“Every year thousands of children die in Rwanda due to a lack of adequate sanitation and clean water. This is the true cost we bear from the failure to ensure basic water and sanitation services. The Government should increase the level of spending on water and sanitation, and donor governments increase the share of aid they spend on water and sanitation, if we want to turn this situation around.” Said Nshuti Rugerinyange, WaterAid Country Representative.
It is reported that each day 2,000 children succumb to diarrhoea due to lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is the biggest cause of deaths of children under the age of five in the region. Four out of ten people don’t have access to safe water, while seven out of ten people don’t have access to adequate sanitation.
At least 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world’s population.
Also 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world’s population.
END
