African Seminar
Lack of Clean Water
In both the rural and urban areas of Africa, the lack of clean water is becoming a very prominent issue. Each year, more than 1.6 million children die from diarrhea, mainly as a result of inadequate sanitation, poor water supply, and lack of personal hygiene. In the more rural areas, only two in five people have access to a clean water supply, and less than one in five people have access to any form of sanitation. Of the 54 African countries, only five are considered to be “on track” by The Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Out of the remaining countries, nearly thirty percent have almost no water sanitation programs at all.
While it is necessary to sanitize water, the water supply of Africa is not nearly sufficient. The water sources, such as rivers, lakes, aquifers, and, and wetlands, are encroached upon. This causes tensions over water rights between villages, cities, and even countries. Increasingly, many rivers and lakes are being affected by invasive species. In addition, climate change is expected to have diverse impacts on the water cycle, including altered river flows, changes in groundwater recharge, more intense floods, and longer droughts. The inability to predict and manage the quantity and quality of water and the impacts of droughts, floods, and climatic variability imposes large costs on many economies in the developing world.
There are many methods of water purification. One method is known as solar water disinfection (SODIS). The water is put in plastic PET bottles and placed on black tar covered roofs. Using heat from the roof and solar radiation, the water is purified of bacteria that cause common water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and diarrhea. After only eight hours, the water is suitable for drinking. SODIS is a cheap and effective method for decentralized water treatment, usually applied at the household level, and is recommended by the World Health Organization as a viable method for household water treatment and safe storage.
Another method of water purification is slow sand-filtration. The main characteristic of slow sand filtration is that, due to the effect of biological activity, it efficiently removes pathogenic organisms from raw water, particularly the bacteria and viruses responsible for transmitting water-related diseases. Furthermore, no chemical products are required, nor highly qualified, continual supervision. Nevertheless, there are still a number of difficulties involved in the implementation of the technology and the operation of the system. In addition, the direct cost of the construction is relatively high.
Although many countries are in desperate need of clean water, the high cost of water purification systems often deter many poor countries from spending the money. The lack of water in general forces women and children to walk long distances to fetch dirty water that will most likely make them very ill. Some other methods for purification include solar distillation, ceramic pot filtration, chemical packets and many more. Even though almost every African country is in need of water purification, the poor countries often do not have the money to spend, and the slightly more wealthy countries have many more problems of their own. There are many ways in which other nations can provide water aid for these impoverished regions.