milestone 3,,

WATER SANITATION AND HYGIENE

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Water sanitation and hygiene

The topic I am going to deal with is water sanitation and hygiene which is normally referred to as WaSH or Watsan. This has been a key health issue that involves the public. The availability or accessibility of sustainable Watsan has been an issue of concern for quite some time now. According to reports collected from several international agencies that deal with development, water sanitation and hygiene is tied up to a lot more things than people can fathom, (Mbuya, & Humphrey, 2016). They say that with Watsan, a person’s health can improve, students can learn better, there can be a better sense of gender equality and it can even boost life expectancy.

Moreover, Watsan can bring about a lot of international developments. Accessible wash not only means having access to the things you need but also to the education of the importance of water sanitation and hygiene. The most essential things are adequate sanitation and clean drinking and using water. Having these three things can help a lot in boosting socio-economic development. It can also help to reduce the number of ill people that get affected by poor sanitation and hygiene and can also help in poverty eradication.

The issue

According to the world health organization research that was done in 2015, out of every three people, one of them does not have access to sanitation facilities, (World Health Organization. 2017). This sums up to 2.4 billion people in the world. The number of people that have no access to clean water is around 663 million persons. This is alarming because the number does not reduce if anything it only increases. Recent research shows that the number of people without safe drinking water is around eight hundred and eighty for million and the number will continue to be bothersome if it is not addressed well. For sanitation, people need things like soap and sanitizers to clean their handles.

These are the basic things. Toilet rolls and real toilets. Things like flying toilets are the main reasons people suffer from cholera and other diseases caused by dirt. The other thing is that a very large number of girls lack access to sanitary towels. This means that dealing with their menstruation becomes very difficult for them, (Hutton, & Varughese, 2016). Considering poverty levels, some families cannot afford to purchase some of these hygienic requirements which expose them and their children very high risks of getting ill. Another thing is that even the latrines that are available are shared by a lot of people which means that being infected by a disease someone else has become inevitable.

Associated problems

In almost all developing countries, 700,000 children lose their lives every year because of diarrhea. This is mostly contributed by a lack of sanitation. Those children that survive the chronic diarrhea end up having physical challenges and issues with their childhood development. It is also the reason as to why so many people with low living standards suffer from cholera and typhoid, (Fuller, & Eisenberg, 2016). Typhoid especially, which is associated with drinking unclean water has been the reason behind the deaths of very many people with low living standards.

Bearing in mind that most of them cannot even afford good medication, they end up dying and leaving their children to struggle which continues the chain of poverty. The other thing is that it hinders learning. When students are suffering from these hygiene-related illnesses it becomes very hard for them to go to school. They are forced to stay at home to even prevent themselves from infecting the rest of the students which makes them lag. Suffering from hygiene-related illnesses also reduces people’s productivity which affects the country’s economy. In addition, any woman that is on their periods is forced to go through a lot of struggles and stress trying to manage their menstruation.

Previous attempts to examine the issue

This is an issue that has been addressed by many organizations including the world health organization. It was concluded that it is an issue that has been affecting most developing counties and that the main reason is poor living standards which make them unable to afford any kind of remedies, (Roche, Bain, & Cumming, 2017). The organizations came up with sustainable development goals that they hoped to achieve after taking it upon them to supply people with all the required amenities. The first of all held campaigns to educate people on the importance of making safe water and maintaining good hygiene. They then started urging people to build real and more toilets that will help reduce the cases of flying toilets. In other places, they introduced portable toilets.

Furthermore, they taught people about the Importance of washing their hands after coming from the washroom and before eating anything. For those people living in places with dirty drinking water, the organizations provided them with water purifiers where people would put their water and get it clean. They also set up hospitals to deal with people already suffering from sanitation and hygiene illnesses and lastly, they started distributing sanitary towels to schools, (Cumming, & Cairncross, 2016). The plan has been ongoing but due to corruption by leaders and inadequate resources, not a lot of people have been reached by the aid.

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