Combating Water Borne Diseases

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently revealed that 78 million children in Nigeria are at risk of three water-related threats, a development that requires the commitment and efforts of all stakeholders to address, reports Ugo Aliogo

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has revealed that 78 million children in Nigeria are at risk of three water-related threats, which it listed to include inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) related diseases and climate hazards.

This was contained in a statement issued by UNICEF’s Nigeria Chief of WASH, Dr. Jane Bevan, and made available to journalists this week.

According to the report, “In Nigeria, one-third of children do not have access to at least basic water at home, and two-thirds do not have basic sanitation services.

“Hand hygiene is also limited, with three-quarters of children unable to wash their hands due to lack of water and soap at home. As a result, Nigeria is one of the 10 countries that carry the heaviest burden of child deaths from diseases caused by inadequate WASH, such as diarrhea diseases.”

Analysing the report, Bevan said Nigeria also ranked second out of 163 countries globally with the highest risk of exposure to climate and environmental threats.

“Groundwater levels are also dropping, requiring some communities to dig wells twice as deep as just a decade ago. At the same time, rainfall has become more erratic and intense, leading to floods that contaminate scarce water supplies.

“I believe we need to rapidly scale-up investment in the sector, including from global climate financing, strengthen climate resilience in the WASH sector and communities, increase effective and accountable systems, coordination, and capacities to provide water and sanitation services, and implement the UN-Water SDG6 Global Acceleration Framework.

“If we continue at the current pace, it will take 16 years to achieve access to safe water for all in Nigeria. We cannot wait that long and the time to move quickly is now. Investing in climate-resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene services is not only a matter of protecting children’s health today, but also ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come,” she added.

Meanwhile, ahead of the UN 2023 Water Conference, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has called for accelerated investments to help small-scale farmers in developing countries access and manage increasingly scarce water resources in the face of a changing climate and more extreme weather events.

IFAD Associate Vice-President, Strategy and Knowledge Department, Jyotsna Puri, said there would be no food security without water security. Water is indispensable to produce food but small-scale farmers increasingly struggle to access the water they need to grow their crops and feed their animals, leading to human suffering, migration and conflict. Solutions exists, but investments are needed to help millions of small-scale farmers access them.

“About 3.2 billion people overall live in agricultural areas with high to very high-water shortages or scarcity of which 1.2 billion people – roughly one-sixth of the world’s population – live in severely water constrained agricultural areas.

“While small-scale farmers produce one third of the world’s food and up to 70 percent of the food produced in developing countries, they increasingly face water challenges due to climate change. Since 2000, the number and duration of droughts has increased by 29 percent. Population growth causes an increased demand for water, which is also a key driver of water scarcity.

“The only solution is to make the best use of every single drop. Small water infrastructure, better soil and water management, and natural solutions such as agro-forestry can go a long way in ensuring small-scale farmers have the water they need,” Puri added.

The Perspective

Bevan, who gave deeper perspective to the discourse said in the 2021 Water Sanitation and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping (WASHNORM) report by the Nigerian government and UNICEF, more than 30 per cent (62 million) of Nigerians lack access to basic drinking water services, adding that this means that millions of people are denied access to the basic necessity of safe and reliable drinking water.

She said the report also highlighted the fact that Nigeria’s water crisis is linked to high incidences of water-borne diseases, with a diarrhoea prevalence rate of 11per cent which disproportionately affect women and children. 

She revealed that the reasons behind the country’s water crisis are complex, but climate change is undoubtedly a significant factor.

Bevan further remarked that climate change-induced events such as drought and flooding have drastically reduced the quantity and quality of water available to communities and households, leading to WASH-related diseases, contamination of water sources and destruction of sanitation facilities.

Another reason, according to the UNICEF Chief, is the reliance on self-supplied water by households, stating that they are either individual boreholes, wells or similar sources, and data from 2021 WASHNORM estimated that 75per cent of water sources in Nigeria, are self-supplied. 

According to her, “A staggering 81per cent of these are constructed by households and non-government actors. While these sources have helped to improve access to basic drinking water, they are not sustainable in the long run and are not effective in serving a large number of people at once.

 “The issue of self-supplied water sources is made worse by the poor state of urban water supply and utilities across Nigeria, which is another component of this water crisis. For example, the 2021 urban water utility mapping revealed that only 16 of the 28 urban utilities in Nigeria are functional, and only 461 out of the 1,412-water works are active. Capacity utilization is also very low as only 24 per cent of the installed capacity of 8 million cubic meters per day is utilized. Aged and obsolete equipment, inefficient billing and tariff systems, poor power supply and management are identified as factors contributing to this poor performance.”

In the same vein, the Programme Manager, Hacey Health Initiative, Chioma Osakwe, said the it was important to note that in Nigeria, there are some landlocked locations and these locations would not have access to water bodies.

She also stated that the predominant source of water in landlocked places is usually well water and it is usually limited, and this implies that they have to watch how much water they use to take care of sanitation, it means women and girls cannot practice good menstrual hygiene even in situations where there are enough wells the water is usually contaminated. 

Osakwe said in locations where water bodies were abundant, the problem is usually the quality of the water, as the lakes are sometimes contaminated. For instance a lake that empties in another town flows to another town where they use the water for sanitation, and food.

Osakwe added: “The problem is one that we can solve and that is what at HACEY we are working to solve the social issue through our clean water project we have provided over 65 boreholes to communities across Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ogun, Delta and Imo States and this has gone a long way to address the water and sanitation challenges faced in communities. Women most affected by the WASH situation have been saved and helped to channel their time and resources to other pressing issues.”

Budgeting and Water Infrastructure

Nigeria has a looming water crisis that requires urgent attention. According to estimates by global development organizations and the Nigerian government, the country needs about N4.45 trillion ($10 billion) annually for the next decade to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing safe water for all Nigerians. Unfortunately, the current average annual investment in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) by government, donors, and the private sector is only N484 billion, leaving a staggering gap of 90 per cent between the estimated need and expenditure.

Bevan is optimistic that an increase in private sector engagement and investments in the WASH sector, is required to help bridge the funding gap and ensure that Nigerians have access to safe water. 

Her view is that the government alone cannot solve this problem, therefore the private sector has a crucial role to play, stating that the recently launched WASH account report by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources shows that an increase in investment by the private sector from the current contribution of below 2 percent of total annual WASH expenditure to above 20 percent is critical to the operation and maintenance of water facilities and improvement in service delivery and cost recovery. 

Bevan explained that the mobilization of financing for the WASH sector is a broad space that requires the participation of multiple players, adding that in 2022, the federal government collaborated with UNICEF and the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) to develop a finance advocacy strategy and plan to support the mobilization of funding for the sector.

WASH Projects

Bevan remarked that as the country works towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing safe water and sanitation for all its citizens, scaling WASH services remains a major challenge, particularly in hard-to-reach communities.

She revealed that over the years, UNICEF and its partners have supported the Nigerian government in developing models for WASH service delivery, noting that these models cover community-led approaches to sanitation promotion and financing, solar-powered water abstraction systems for boreholes, and household hygiene promotion strategies, among others.

Continuing, she said: “UNICEF has facilitated the creation of a dedicated agency called the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and WASH departments/units at the local government council level to help prioritize service provision in rural areas and hard-to-reach communities. However, these agencies, systems, and structures will need adequate resourcing to take these scalable models of WASH service delivery and implement them in more communities across different local governments and states in Nigeria. 

Regarding scaling, Osakwe said security, monitoring, and evaluation challenges, are some of the problems that confronts water project, stating that if a water project is commissioned in a community, rather than allowing the occupants of the community to access the water, some individuals in the community monetize and stifle the process and this defeats the entire purpose of such projects.

She said: “So I would advise that as much as we are looking to initiate projects in hard-to-reach communities we should endeavour to create a structure that ensures smooth and effective monitoring of such projects. Also, the Security of these projects because most times in hard-to-reach communities the gatekeepers sometimes destroy equipment or even the facility because it threatens their livelihood this is why at Hacey we prioritize stakeholder engagements as a precursor to ensuring the longevity of the projects.”