Cool, clear water

By Adam Hart-Davis

During the time that it takes you to read this page, ten children will have died because they did not have clean drinking water.

This year sees the beginning of an international campaign against world poverty, and the first thing poor people need is clean water. We in Britain take water for granted; we use prodigious quantities; we take deep baths and long showers, we water our lawns, and wash our cars. The average Briton uses 135 litres of water every day. The average person in the developing countries has access to only 10 litres - and that is for everything.

In Britain before 1850 the infant mortality rate was 50 per cent; of all the babies that were born, half did not live to see their fifth birthdays. They died of cholera, of typhoid, of dysentery, of diarrhoea and dehydration - but basically they died because the drinking water was contaminated with sewage. This has been one of the deadliest killers throughout human history, and it still is. Somewhere in the world a child dies every 15 seconds, because the water is not clean.

What can we do about it? Well, there is one charity whose primary aim is to provide clean water and sanitation for the poorest people of Africa and Asia - WaterAid. A major international organization, WaterAid works with local communities to help them to achieve a better quality of life.

In Tigray, high in the northern hills of Ethiopia, WaterAid helped people from two villages to build a gravity-feed water supply, with 2.4 km of pipes. Now 1256 people have water on tap, and the women's lives have been transformed. This is the account of one of them, Akesa Hadish: 'Before we used two different water sources. One is a spring, and the other is much further away where we used to have to go when the spring dried up. We used to have to walk for an hour to the source, and then we often had to queue for four or five hours. People and livestock both used it... it was polluted and very muddy around the edges where people and cattle walked. Now the water is pure. The animals don't defecate in it and we don't have to queue up at all.

'The children all used to suffer with fever, rashes, diarrhoea, and skin diseases. We don't have these diseases now.

'We used to collect only one jerry can a day, because it took so long to collect it. Now, though, we can use up to five jerry cans in one day if we need to, and this has brought so many changes. We can wash our children now. Before we couldn't even wash them once a month, but now we can wash them every day. I tell the children to wash their hands and faces, and I can wash their clothes, the cooking pots, and the house.

'Now that we don't spend four or five hours every day collecting water we have more time for household chores and other work. We are growing salad and tomatoes in our gardens.'

Stories like this are repeated all over the developing world. Millions of women still spend most of their lives collecting water, and watching their babies die. WaterAid has people out there in the villages, helping them to solve these problems. They do not use high technology. They explain how wells can be dug, and advise where. They explain how people can harvest rainwater, cap and protect springs, dam streams, and pipe water to their villages. These are all low-tech, low-cost solutions.

The other side of the problem is sanitation. Even today 2.6 billion people have no access to any sort of lavatory. Most of them go in the bush. This is bad enough for the men, but much worse for the women, and especially the girls. Many dare not go out in daylight, and so hold it in all day, and creep out after dark. This is deeply uncomfortable, causes various bladder problems, and puts the women at risk from marauding animals - and men. And if there are no latrines at school, many girls will not go, especially after puberty; so they are denied proper education.

For both men and women, defecation outside means contamination of the ground, but worse, contamination of the fingers. A teaspoonful of shit contains several million bacteria, plus, in many places, eggs and larvae of parasitic worms.

Contamination causes disease, and disease brings distress, lack of dignity, and death - and yet the solutions can be simple and cheap. WaterAid can show people how to build simple pit latrines, or large composting latrines for a whole school, from locally available materials. Locally trained masons can dig and line the pits; families can build their own huts. These latrines enormously improve the quality of life for everyone who uses them. They transform entire communities - and all that is needed is the know-how, which WaterAid and its partner organizations can provide.

At the village of Bayandi Palogo, in Burkina Faso, new latrines have changed lives. Sophie Zongo: 'Before, everyone had to go outside; the flies used to go into the faeces and come into the houses. They brought dirt and illness. Now the latrines are so close to our houses that even if you are ill you can use them.

'We feel better because our dignity is preserved - especially the women, because now if you want to go to the latrine you can clap to make sure no one is in there. And we are protected from disease. The children were often ill, which stopped them going to school. Now I can hope that my children will grow up in good health, and do well at school and get a job.

'We have learned a lot about hygiene - how to store drinking water, and to wash pots properly. And as soon as we have finished in the latrines we use soap and wash our hands.'

I, Adam Hart-Davis, am ashamed that millions of people have to suffer and die because they lack such basic things as water and sanitation, but I am convinced that WaterAid can help, in a massive way.