The number of people without access to drinking water in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia has risen from 9.5 million to 16.2 million in just five months, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday in a report. release.
The humanitarian emergency situation continues to affect children in the Sahel region, adds the United Nations agency.
“Children in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel could die in very high numbers if urgent assistance is not provided, at a time when severe malnutrition and the risk of water-borne diseases overlap,” warns Unicef, which spreads the announced in World Water Week.
Past records demonstrate that when high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children occur at the same time as outbreaks of deadly diseases like cholera or diarrhoea, child mortality increases dramatically and tragically. “When water is unavailable or unsafe, the risks to children multiply exponentially,” says UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, quoted in the note.
“In the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, millions of children are one illness away from a catastrophe,” continues Catherine Russell.
In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, drought, armed conflict, and instability “are creating a situation of insecure access to water, with 40 million children facing high or extremely high levels of water vulnerability.”
“According to the latest data from the WHO [Organização Mundial de Saúde]More children are already dying from unsafe water and sanitation in the Sahel than anywhere else in the world,” the statement read.
The note also points out that more than 2.8 million children in the two regions – Horn of Africa and Sahel – “already suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which means that they have up to 11 times more risk of dying from waterborne diseases “. “. , what well-fed children.”
UNICEF notes that it only has 3% of the funds needed to seek “life-saving assistance and resilient multisectoral services for children and their families in urgent need of help in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.”
“Of this amount, the budget for water, sanitation and climate resilience assistance is very small. The call to respond to the needs of children and vulnerable families in terms of water, sanitation and hygiene programs in the central Sahel region is financed with only 22%”, emphasizes the organization.
Help needed by children in both regions includes “improving access to weather-resistant water, sanitation and hygiene services, drilling to create reliable groundwater sources, developing the use of solar systems, screening and treatment of malnourished children and expansion of prevention services”, concludes Unicef.
Source: TSF
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
