As she prepared to give birth to her baby, Jennifer faced a decision no mother should have to make. She could risk delivery at the local healthcare centre, with no clean water, unhygienic pit toilets and no facilities to sterilise equiment, or travel by bus in great discomfort on a dangerous road, to her nearest hospital in Port Moresby.
More than one million women and newborn babies die each year from preventable infections linked to unclean births.
This Christmas you can help deliver life-changing clean water for mums like Jennifer and their babies.
Two years ago, Jennifer made the arduous journey to Port Moresby to give birth safely to her first child, her son Michael.
"Clean water is important. Having clean water helps protect us from sicknesses. When the water is dirty we get diarrhoea." - Jennifer
"We have to have a standard improved healthcare system within our facility, and we need the water, and our patients, mothers, babies too, they need the water.” - Gabriella
Every year, 16.6 million women in the world’s least developed countries give birth in healthcare facilities without clean water, decent toilets and hygiene.
It’s a shocking statistic, but with your help we can change this. With sustainable clean water supplies, better toilets and access to hygiene facilities, families face a brighter, healthier beginning.
About WaterAid
WaterAid has teams in 28 countries across the world, working with our partners to change millions of lives every year by improving access to clean water, toilets and hygiene.
Since 1981, we’ve reached almost 29 million people with clean water. But we can’t stop there.
In the last 43 years, we’ve gone from strength to strength to become one of the most respected organisations dealing solely with water, sanitation and hygiene issues.
What do WaterAid do?
While installing taps and toilets is essential to our work, we do so much more. We convince governments to change laws, link policy makers with people on the ground, pool knowledge and resources and rally support from people and organisations around the world, making lasting change happen on a massive scale.