Progress on water and sanitation still not enough

Angola has made huge strides in widening its drinking water coverage, but needs to raise basic sanitation levels if it is to cut its appalling child mortality rates, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other aid organisations said on Thursday. While access to clean, safe water had expanded by more than 50 percent since 1990, half the population was still without access in 2002, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. Despite the improvement, access to basic sanitation rates dropped to 56 percent from 62 percent in urban communities, and to just 16 percent from 19 percent in rural areas. One of the UN's Millennium Development Goals is to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 - a target that could make a remarkable difference to people's lives. This lack of basic services is a silent war, killing 4,000 children worldwide each day, says the report said. "The provision of safe drinking water, coupled with hygienic sanitation facilities, is seen as a precondition of health and for success in the fight against poverty, hunger, child deaths and gender inequality," the report said in its introduction. No one knows that better than the inhabitants of the village of Mabuia, 64 kilometres north of Luanda in the rural province of Bengo. Mabuia's colonial water system, like much of the country's infrastructure, was destroyed during Angola's 27-year civil conflict and for more than two decades women and children were forced to make an arduous one-hour round trip to fetch water from the river. "It was sad to see old women and kids collecting the water, and walking such a long distance with buckets or 20 litre jerry cans," said Jaime Rodrigues, Mabuia's administrator. "The river Mbongue is three kilometres from the village, and the water is not clean. It was not treated and we had a lot of diseases and diarrhoea among the children. Some kids died," he added. But in 2000 UNICEF rebuilt the pipeline, added a chlorination system, put in new water tanks, and added latrines, showers, a laundry and public taps. Users pay a small fee so as to maintain the project. Aurora Jeremias, a Mabuia resident and mother of five, has noticed a sharp improvement in her family's quality of life. "Children used to die here, but nobody really realised that it was [because of] the water. They had diarrhoea or scabies - we had a lot of these diseases, but not any more. Now my children don't get sick, they are very healthy because they drink clean water," she said. Apart from the immediate gains in health, having water nearby has changed life for the better in a host of other ways. "Collecting water would make you very tired - it was like a job," Jeremias said. "But now with the fountain we can get water for the whole house very quickly, and we have time to do other things - to make home improvements or to bake bread." Jeremias now has both the time and the water to make bread for others in the village. On a good day, she can sell 100 loaves and make 1,000 kwanzas ($12) for herself and her family. This means they can buy other basic materials, like mosquito nets and extra food, but it also creates a deeper sense of hope for the future. "That money is very useful to put the kids in school, to buy school materials and medicines. I'm much more optimistic now. I hope that my children will grow up, study a lot and earn a lot of money. They can be doctors, nurses, teachers - they can really be someone in society," she said. Jeremias is lucky, but for millions of others living in rural or peri-urban areas, there simply isn't enough clean water to go around. This is particularly tragic given that, after malaria, unsafe water, and poor sanitation and hygiene are the biggest child-killers in Angola, where one in four children is likely to die before their fifth birthday. While Angola has come some way, it needs to do much more if the government is to reach its target of halving child mortality by 2008. "Lack of water is the main problem," said Serafim Quintimo, who heads the governance programme at Development Workshop (DW), a non-profit organisation helping people with shelter, water and sanitation. Working in the rubbish-infested Luanda shantytowns, Quintimo is extremely concerned about the water deficiency and the lack of latrines. While DW has no official data yet, the organisation is worried that disease is spreading with the dirt. "This is a serious concern," Quintimo said. "We have standpipes linked to the EPAL [Luanda's public water] network but it's not enough. It's not regular - that means children cannot bathe, people cannot clean their homes," he said. People have resorted to buying from tankers, which draw water from the Bengo river further north, treat it with chlorine and sell it on the streets to desperate families. Tank owners pay around $50 for 5,000 litres of water, which they then sell in 20 litre cans for 15 kwanzas, with no guarantee that it is safe. When clean water flows from the standpipes, it costs only five kwanzas for 60 litres. "People are spending more on water - money which could be used for food, rent and educating their children," Quintimo commented, noting that they were less likely to "waste" what little they had on building latrines and making other hygienic home improvements. While the problem was bad in the peri-urban areas, aid workers feared it was even worse in the depths of the countryside. UNICEF, which has drilled 65 boreholes in rural Angola this year but only has a water and sanitation budget of $1.2 million, hoped the Mabuia case would encourage the government to expand the idea. "Mabuia is a good example of what needs to be done," said UNICEF representative Mario Ferrari. "Angola is a fairly well supplied country in terms of river systems, but these need to be connected to villages and made drinkable. However, Angola's post-war problems are complex, and to make hefty inroads into child mortality will take continued international support and political will."