Minister highlights water, sanitation problems

Half the population of Uganda lacks access to safe water, and only about 30 percent has access to adequate sanitation, according to Minister of State for Water, Lands and the Environment Maria Mutagamba. Uganda has a population of about 22 million. Mutagamba made the comments on Thursday as she inaugurated an office for the Uganda Water and Sanitation Network (UWASNET) at Bugolobi, Kampala, The New Vision Ugandan government-owned newspaper reported on Friday. In Uganda, accesses to safe drinking water and to a clean healthy environment "remain two of the most commonly unfulfilled human rights", according to the humanitarian web site Ugandaid [http://www.ugandaid.net/]. The situation is even worse and more life-threatening for people who have been displaced by conflict, especially those living in camps for internally-displaced people in the west and north of the country, which were never intended or designed for long-term use by big populations. Yet, access to potable water has risen somewhat in Uganda in the last decade, according to humanitarian sources, who said access in the early 1990s stood at about 43 percent in urban areas and 30 percent in rural areas. In 1991, access to sanitation facilities was about 63 percent in urban areas (urban population is now some 14 percent and rising, according to World Bank statistics) and some 28 percent in rural areas, they added. "There has been a low but steady increase in the access to safe water since 1995, with coverage reaching 47 percent in 1999," the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported on Monday. By another measure, UNICEF and the World Health Organisation estimate 50 percent of the Ugandan population to have "improved access to drinking water resources" - with the figure at 72 percent in urban areas and 46 percent in rural areas. The organisations also reckon the percentage of population with "improved access to sanitation facilities" at 79 percent - 96 percent urban and 72 percent rural. [see http://www.un.org] "As Uganda boasts of great achievements and advancements in the past years, there is still a big percentage of poor people without access to basic safe water and adequate sanitation," according to UWASNET, whose Bugolobi office Mutagamba opened on Thursday. UWASNET is a national network formed by more than 150 local and international nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to strengthen the contribution of NGOs and community-based organisations (CBOs) to achieving water- and sanitation-sector goals in Uganda. Global experience had shown that improving health through safe water and sanitation took more than just construction of facilities, it noted on World Water Day in March 2001. Rather, it said, such improvement required hygiene education and the enhanced capacity of poor people "to take action and make decisions that will improve the quality of their lives". Uganda’s health status indicators are among the poorest in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a high prevalence of illness and life years lost to preventable diseases, according to the UNDP Human Development Report 2000. In addition to inadequate access to quality health care, the terrible burden of HIV/AIDS and low immunisation rates, it listed low sanitary/latrine coverage (which it put at 47.5 of the population), and low access to safe water (38 percent) as factors leading to a chronically unhealthy population - which, in turn, was a major drag on productivity and development. The poor water and sanitation situation in Uganda disproportionately affects children and women, with children attending primary school facing particular difficulties keeping themselves clean and healthy, according to humanitarian sources. When an outbreak of cholera struck the country in February 1998, over 550 primary schools were closed due to lack of adequate sanitation facilities. In the era of universal primary education in Uganda, UNICEF on Monday expressed concern about the levels of sanitation and water supply in schools, which, it said, had become "particularly serious issues". In 1995, it said, 44 percent of government-aided primary schools had a safe water supply, and the reported ratio of students to latrines was 328:1. However, primary-school enrolment had more than doubled since 1997 and, as a result, the student-to-latrine ratio now stood at more than 700:1, it added. The improvement of water and sanitation facilities, as well as of hygiene and sanitation practices, in schools and the community at large have been highlighted as priorities for UNICEF in 2002. The challenges the water and sanitation sector faces are "so enormous that no single effort or initiative alone could address the water and sanitation needs for poor people in Uganda", according to UWASNET. The network has emphasised the urgency of linking all efforts and initiatives by NGOs and CBOs, local and central government, donors and private sector organisations, and to develop partnerships between them. "There is need to join hands, combine efforts and pool resources in order to rise to the challenge facing us," it added.