Time to solve the problem of scarcity, unhygienic water

There is the need for every middle class and wealthy person to drill at least one borehole in any community they can reach across the Africa from now to 2025 and beyond if possible.

According to World Health Organisation, by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.

Let’s look at the some of the statistics. In 2015, around 180,000 children under 5 years died - roughly 500 a day - in sub-Saharan Africa due to diarrheal linked to inadequate water according to World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF.

But in 2017, 361 000 children under five years died of diarrheal. Poor sanitation and contaminated water are also linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid.

Some three in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion people, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF in July 2017.

At least 844 million people do not have even basic drinking water. These include 263 million people who have to spend over 30 minutes per trip to collect water from sources outside the home, and 159 million who still drink untreated water from surface water sources. In 90 countries, progress towards basic sanitation is too slow, meaning they will not reach universal coverage even by 2030.

According to WHO, in 2019, contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrheal, cholera, dysentery and typhoid.

We can all see that number is changing every time a research is conducted. We can save a lot of lives by doing something about it.

Most of these illnesses and deaths can be prevented through simple, inexpensive measures. For instance, trachoma remains the leading cause of preventable blindness, accounting for 146 million acute cases around the world. But the disease is almost unheard of in places where basic water supply, sanitation and hygiene prevail.

Abubakar Usman Abubakar, Chairman, Ibtihaj Modern Corporation Ltd.