Rainfall may be ample in the Central African Republic (CAR), in the middle of the continent's vast rainforest, but most of its people still do without clean water.
The provision of clean water is one of the greatest challenges facing the fledgling government of President Francois Bozize. Water scarcity is now a bigger problem for most of the CAR’s 3.5 million people, who were better served before the six-month antigovernment rebellion that ended in March 2003 and brought Bozize to power. Today, the state water utility, Societé de Distribution d’Eau de Centrafrique (SODECA), and village water-administration committees have not recovered from the looting of their warehouses for spare water-pumping equipment and other supplies.
Since village residents who contribute to the administrative committees now have far less money due to CAR’s instability and poor economy, the committees can no longer afford to replace faulty equipment. In addition, the committees and the state utility do not have enough maintenance technicians to keep the few remaining facilities operating. Since 2003, SODECA has only been able to serve 22 percent of the nation's population.
Given these shortcomings, rural dwellers have turned to polluted backwaters, rivers, streams and wells to meet their domestic needs. These are often contaminated with animal and human faecal material. Hospitals reported that 41 percent of the patients who seek medical care have contracted diseases associated with drinking contaminated water. The most prominent of these, in order of frequency, are intestinal parasites, diarrhoea and digestive ailments.
Waterborne illnesses, such as Guinea worm, or Dracunculus medinensis, often affect people during peak agricultural periods, with serious economic and health consequences. "This can seriously affect their agricultural production and the availability of food in the household, and consequently the nutritional status of their family members, particularly young children," the United Nations World Health Organization has said.
[On the Net: Water-related Diseases: www.who.int]
Public sanitation and personal hygiene remain major problems affecting the health of the country's women and children. An evaluation seminar held in 1992 as a follow-up to the first UN International Decade for Clean Drinking Water (1981-1990) found that showed that half the incidents of infant and child mortality in CAR were due to water-related diseases. With today's compounded water problems, this situation can only have worsened.
Women and children are at greater risk than men because they deal directly with contaminated water at its source. Many must walk several kilometres a day, often along poorly accessible and even dangerous paths, to draw water. Obliged to help, children abandon school. According to the Bangui office of the UN Children's Fund (Unicef), half the nation's children die of water-related diseases and poor sanitation. Children constitute 60 percent of the population of CAR.
Remedial action
The CAR supports the goals of the UN’s Return to Water Decade (2005-2015), which urges governments to implement good principles of integrated water-resource management. National and international nongovernmental organisations and the private sector have been urged to contribute.
For more than 10 years now, the government has worked to redress the chaotic management of water resources. It has improved technical training of rural water-management-committee personnel and of SODECA's pump-maintenance crews and built more potable-water installations. With the adoption of a national water and sanitation policy, the government, supported by development partners, is planning programmes to ensure that schools, markets, health centres and rural areas are provided with clean drinking water. According to the policy, priority will be given to urban areas of 4,000 to 10,000 residents, rural centres and then villages of fewer than 4,000 dwellers.
In urban areas, SODECA will implement a new system to charge consumers for water. While the utility will continue to charge customers who subscribe to its services directly, it will now levy charges on individuals who drill boreholes and sell water directly to the public as well.
Another reform under consideration is the privatisation of water-utility services, in hope that doing so would improve water supply, sanitation and protect the environment, which the government considers a development priority.
In spite of the programmes currently in place, water supply in the CAR has failed to meet the demand of its rising population. The director of the CAR chapter of the Regional Centre for Clean Drinking Water, Françoise Kiringuinza-Singa, said only 22 percent of the country's 2.4 million rural dwellers were provided with quality water.
Poor urban residents are no better off. Henri Mamolongo, 47, is a carpenter with five children who lives in the Nguitangola neighbourhood of Bangui, the nation's capital. He has never had a constant water supply. With earnings of about US$90 a month, he cannot afford to live in the part of town that is served with piped water and must suffer the consequences.
"We drink well water, like the majority of my neighbours," he said.
The wells in his area are uncovered and at ground level. In close proximity to latrines and refuse, they are vulnerable to contamination. When Mamolongo’s five-year-old child suffered fainting spells and felt itchy after bathing, and when one of his sons developed fever and started vomiting, he took them to the doctor.
"The medical examinations showed that our children were beginning to show the first symptoms of typhoid fever. As long as we do not change our source of water supply, our health will always be at risk," he said.
The provision of clean water is one of the greatest challenges facing the fledgling government of President Francois Bozize. Water scarcity is now a bigger problem for most of the CAR’s 3.5 million people, who were better served before the six-month antigovernment rebellion that ended in March 2003 and brought Bozize to power. Today, the state water utility, Societé de Distribution d’Eau de Centrafrique (SODECA), and village water-administration committees have not recovered from the looting of their warehouses for spare water-pumping equipment and other supplies.
Since village residents who contribute to the administrative committees now have far less money due to CAR’s instability and poor economy, the committees can no longer afford to replace faulty equipment. In addition, the committees and the state utility do not have enough maintenance technicians to keep the few remaining facilities operating. Since 2003, SODECA has only been able to serve 22 percent of the nation's population.
Given these shortcomings, rural dwellers have turned to polluted backwaters, rivers, streams and wells to meet their domestic needs. These are often contaminated with animal and human faecal material. Hospitals reported that 41 percent of the patients who seek medical care have contracted diseases associated with drinking contaminated water. The most prominent of these, in order of frequency, are intestinal parasites, diarrhoea and digestive ailments.
Waterborne illnesses, such as Guinea worm, or Dracunculus medinensis, often affect people during peak agricultural periods, with serious economic and health consequences. "This can seriously affect their agricultural production and the availability of food in the household, and consequently the nutritional status of their family members, particularly young children," the United Nations World Health Organization has said.
[On the Net: Water-related Diseases: www.who.int]
Public sanitation and personal hygiene remain major problems affecting the health of the country's women and children. An evaluation seminar held in 1992 as a follow-up to the first UN International Decade for Clean Drinking Water (1981-1990) found that showed that half the incidents of infant and child mortality in CAR were due to water-related diseases. With today's compounded water problems, this situation can only have worsened.
Women and children are at greater risk than men because they deal directly with contaminated water at its source. Many must walk several kilometres a day, often along poorly accessible and even dangerous paths, to draw water. Obliged to help, children abandon school. According to the Bangui office of the UN Children's Fund (Unicef), half the nation's children die of water-related diseases and poor sanitation. Children constitute 60 percent of the population of CAR.
![[Mali] Village well infected by Guinea worm in Mali.](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw== "Village wells are running dry")
Photo: Almahady Cisse  |
| “We drink well water like the majority of our neighbours. As long as we don’t change our source of water supply, our health will always be at risk” |
The CAR supports the goals of the UN’s Return to Water Decade (2005-2015), which urges governments to implement good principles of integrated water-resource management. National and international nongovernmental organisations and the private sector have been urged to contribute.
For more than 10 years now, the government has worked to redress the chaotic management of water resources. It has improved technical training of rural water-management-committee personnel and of SODECA's pump-maintenance crews and built more potable-water installations. With the adoption of a national water and sanitation policy, the government, supported by development partners, is planning programmes to ensure that schools, markets, health centres and rural areas are provided with clean drinking water. According to the policy, priority will be given to urban areas of 4,000 to 10,000 residents, rural centres and then villages of fewer than 4,000 dwellers.
In urban areas, SODECA will implement a new system to charge consumers for water. While the utility will continue to charge customers who subscribe to its services directly, it will now levy charges on individuals who drill boreholes and sell water directly to the public as well.
Another reform under consideration is the privatisation of water-utility services, in hope that doing so would improve water supply, sanitation and protect the environment, which the government considers a development priority.
In spite of the programmes currently in place, water supply in the CAR has failed to meet the demand of its rising population. The director of the CAR chapter of the Regional Centre for Clean Drinking Water, Françoise Kiringuinza-Singa, said only 22 percent of the country's 2.4 million rural dwellers were provided with quality water.
Poor urban residents are no better off. Henri Mamolongo, 47, is a carpenter with five children who lives in the Nguitangola neighbourhood of Bangui, the nation's capital. He has never had a constant water supply. With earnings of about US$90 a month, he cannot afford to live in the part of town that is served with piped water and must suffer the consequences.
"We drink well water, like the majority of my neighbours," he said.
The wells in his area are uncovered and at ground level. In close proximity to latrines and refuse, they are vulnerable to contamination. When Mamolongo’s five-year-old child suffered fainting spells and felt itchy after bathing, and when one of his sons developed fever and started vomiting, he took them to the doctor.
"The medical examinations showed that our children were beginning to show the first symptoms of typhoid fever. As long as we do not change our source of water supply, our health will always be at risk," he said.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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