Africa is going to miss United Nations development targets of doubling access to drinking water and sanitation by 2015, and the situation in many countries is actually getting worse, a United Nations official said on Friday.
On a global level, the world is on track to achieve the target of improving access to clean water, and progress has also been made on sanitation, according to a report published this week by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef.
But Africa continues to lag behind. In West and Central Africa, home to many of the world’s poorest countries, the number of people without drinking water actually rose to 157-million in 2004 from 124-million in 1990.
The region has the world’s lowest levels of clean water and sanitation: only one in three people has access to sanitation. This fuels the world’s highest rate of child mortality, with one in five children dying before the age of 5, often due to diarrhoea and water-borne diseases such as cholera.
”In West and Central Africa, we are very far from achieving the Millennium Goals. The number of people without water and sanitation is actually rising,” Esther Guluma, director of Unicef for West and Central Africa, told a news conference.
She attributed this to a high rate of population growth, rampant poverty, political instability and a lack of commitment by regional governments.
Asked if the continent could meet its development goals, she replied: ”For Africa, the answer is very simple: No.”
In five countries in West and Central Africa — Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Equatorial Guinea and Chad — less than half the population had access to proper water sources.
Unicef estimates that access to soap for hand washing can reduce levels of diarrhoea by 46%, and latrine ownership can also slash the prevalence of this affliction by a third. — Reuters