Clean Water Saves Lives
Water is life. Yet one billion people do not have access to safe water, and 2.6 billion people live without proper sanitation. Water-borne illness is the second highest cause of childhood death in the world. When water is unsafe and sanitation non-existent, water can kill.
UNICEF is committed to providing safe water and sanitation to the millions of affected children and their families. We distribute oral rehydration salts wherever children are suffering from illness and deadly dehydration caused by unsafe water. After a natural disaster, we train teachers to educate children about safe water and proper sanitation. And we distribute hygiene kits during a crisis to help children and their families adapt to their new circumstances and keep diseases like cholera at bay.
The Water-Education Link
Access to clean water does more than just save lives, it can turn lives around. When children no longer struggle with recurring illness, they can go to school and get an education. Their parents can tend to their fields and earn an income. Girls, especially, often miss out on school because they spend hours every day fetching water from distant sources. We help build pipelines to bring water to remote communities and we supply families with wells and water pumps so that girls, too, can get an education.
All children have the right to safe water and sanitation. Clean water helps break the cycle of poverty and saves children’s lives. UNICEF works all over the world to make sure children have access to the most basic, lifesaving element—water.
Latest News and Reports from the Field
February 4, 2010
UNICEF providing safe water to over half million people in Haiti
UNICEF is distributing more than 2.6 million liters of safe drinking water daily to over half a million people in Port-au-Prince, and in the cities of Leogane and Jacmel. Every day, UNICEF and a local partner send out 150 trucks to 200 distribution points—and are working to increase capacity even further.
January 25, 2010
Haiti's double disaster
The earthquake that killed so many is, in fact, a double disaster: The serious development constraints that Haiti already faced have now worsened significantly. Aid is reaching children in parts of Haiti devastated by the earthquake, but many of the disaster's worst effects are aggravated by the country's longstanding impoverishment and instability.
January 7, 2010
UNICEF provides access to safe water to children in Somalia
Fetching water used to be an arduous task for Jamilah, age 11. It took two hours every day to walk back and forth from the wells. Now she simply goes to the new water kiosk. In Somalia, where only 29 percent of the population has access to safe water UNICEF has helped provide safe water to 100,000 people this year by establishing new—or rehabilitating existing—water systems.
