Water

Last Sunday was World Water Day and there has been a lot of information in the newspapers and on social media during the last week. The theme this year was Water and Sustainable Development.

Water and sanitation is included in the MDG (Millennium Development Goals) and there is a specific goal in the proposed post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, which are currently being discussed. The proposed goal number 6 is to 'Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all'.

In 2010 the UN declared that access to safe water and sanitation was a basic human right. But the truth is that the provision is far from universal, especially in Sub Saharan Africa. An article by UWASNET (Uganda Water And Sanitation NGO Network) in the paper this week put the number of people in Uganda without proper sanitation facilities at 3.5 million.

Drinking unsafe water increases the risk of diarrhoea, which is especially dangerous for the under 5s. There is currently a typhoid outbreak in Uganda, especially in some areas of Kampala and a small scale cholera outbreak in Kasese. These are probably at least partly due to unsafe water use from contaminated pools and streams.

As I travel around Uganda I see many people, especially children and women collecting water from boreholes and carrying it along the road in jerrycans on their heads.

I have also seen and heard village people saying that their borehole has broken and they are now collecting water from the river or stream again. Not surprisingly the incidence of disease increases. No one fixes the borehole due to lack of funds and lack of expertise and eventually it gets polluted with soil or rubbish. Where village committees take responsibility for the maintenance of the borehole and everyone contributes a small amount towards this then the borehole water remains available for the village.

Uganda isn't short of water, there are so many lakes, Lake Victoria, Albert, Edward and Kyoga to name just the largest ones. The river Nile flows from Lake Victoria via Lake Kyoga and the Murchison Falls to Lake Albert and then north into South Sudan. What is missing is the water treatment and distribution facilities.

 Source of the Nile at Jinja

 Murchison Falls from the River Nile

The Beautiful Lake Bunyonyi

It brings to mind the quote from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge - 'Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink'!