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Showing posts with label Lack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lack. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

180m lack access to basic water, UNICEF

Over 180 million people do not have access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability across the world, UNICEF warned today, as World Water Week gets under way.

“Children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene. ”In countries beset by violence, displacement, conflict and instability, children’s most basic means of survival – water – must be a priority.”

People living in fragile situations are four times more likely to lack basic drinking water than populations in non-fragile situations, according to a recent UNICEF and World Health Organisation analysis. Of the estimated 484 million people living in fragile situations in 2015, 183 million lacked basic drinking water services.

In Yemen, a country reeling from the impact of over two years of conflict, water supply networks that serve the country’s largest cities are at imminent risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair. Around 15 million people in the country have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation.

In Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, around 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children. Water has frequently been used as a weapon of war: In 2016 alone, there were at least 30 deliberate water cuts – including in Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Raqqa and Dara, with pumps destroyed and water sources contaminated.

In conflict-affected areas in northeast Nigeria, 75 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, leaving 3.6 million people without even basic water services.

In South Sudan, where fighting has raged for over three years, almost half the water points across the country have been damaged or completely destroyed.

“In far too many cases, water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse. When children have no safe water to drink, and when health systems are left in ruins, malnutrition and potentially fatal diseases like cholera will inevitably follow,” said Wijesekera.

In Yemen, for example, children make up more than 53 per cent of the over half a million cases of suspected cholera and acute watery diarrhoea reported so far.  Somalia is suffering from the largest outbreak of cholera in the last five years, with nearly 77,000 cases of suspected cholera/acute watery diarrhoea. And in South Sudan, the cholera outbreak is the most severe the country has ever experienced, with more than 19,000 cases since June 2016.


In famine-threatened north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, are in urgent need of safe water. More than 5 million children are estimated to be malnourished this year, with 1.4 million severely so.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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Friday, July 7, 2017

UNICEF says lack of fund threatens education in conflict, disaster zones

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has raised alarm that lack of sufficient fund is threatening education for millions of children caught up in conflicts or disasters, reports NaijaAgroNet.

UNICEF raised this flag ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that out of the $932 million needed this year for education programmes in emergency countries, UNICEF has so far received recorded voluntary contributions of less than $115 million.

Muzoon Almellehan, UNICEF’s latest and youngest Goodwill Ambassador, said in Hamburg, Germany.

“The funds are necessary to give 9.2 million children affected by humanitarian crises access to formal and non-formal basic education,” Almellehan said.

Pointing out that without education, children grow up without the knowledge and skills they need to contribute to the peace and the development of their countries and economies, aggravating an already desperate situation for millions of children,” said Muzoon Almellehan, UNICEF’s latest – and youngest – Goodwill Ambassador, speaking from Hamburg, Germany, where she is representing UNICEF at the G20 Summit. “For the millions of children growing up in war zones, the threats are even more daunting: Not going to school leaves children vulnerable to early marriage, child labour and recruitment by armed forces.”  

Funding gaps for UNICEF education programmes in some of the world’s hot spots vary from 36 per cent in Iraq, to 64 per cent in Syria, 74 per cent in Yemen and 78 per cent in the Central African Republic.

Pursuing educational opportunities has been cited as one of the push factors leading families and children to flee their homes, often at great risk to their lives. A survey of refugee and migrant children in Italy revealed that 38 per cent of them headed to Europe to gain access to learning opportunities. A similar survey in Greece showed that one in three parents or caretakers said that seeking education for their children was the main reason they left their countries for Europe.

For children who have experienced the trauma of war and displacement, education can be life-saving.

When I fled Syria in 2013, I was terrified I would never be able to return to school. But when I arrived in Jordan and realized there was a school in the camp, I was relieved and hopeful,” said Muzoon. “School gives children like me a lifeline and the chance of a peaceful and positive future.”

As an education activist and Syrian refugee, Muzoon joins forces with UNICEF to speak out on behalf of the millions of children who have been uprooted by conflict and are missing out on school.

“I urge world leaders to invest in the futures of children living in emergencies -- and by doing so invest in the future of our world,” Muzoon said.


Uj. N. Dominic/GEE
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Saturday, April 22, 2017

Over 1.2bn Africans lack access to basic sanitation

Over 1.2 billion Africans are surviving without basic sanitation and 395 million people are without clean water, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This is coming as over 130 million Nigerians have been identified as not having access to adequate sanitation out of the total in Africa.

WaterAid made this disclosure as part of the commemoration of the 2017 World Earth Day which theme centred on “Environmental and Climate Literacy” saying the collaborative monitoring platform set up by WaterAid, showed that 57 million people in Nigeria don't have access to safe water.

Also, WaterAid revealed that the over 130 million people living without access to adequate sanitation accounts for the two third of the population and around 45,000 children under five years old die every year from diarrhea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.


NaijaAgroNet further gathered that with Africa’s population projected to be 2.2 billion by 2030, only 32 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africans will have access to sanitation by 2030.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2017

70 countries lack meteorological services to check climate change

An estimated 70 countries across the globe are yet to establish a functional meteorological service in their domains, NaijaAgroNet can authoritatively report.

Disclosing this on Monday, while addressing delegates to the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mr. José Graziano da Silva lamented this development, saying this was the major reason his office has special partnership in this regard with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

This, he said, underlines the fact that some 70 countries do not have established meteorological services as an example.

FAO, therefore, he said, is working with the World Meteorological Organization to develop low-cost, farmer friendly services to address this need.

“To withstand the vagaries of a harsher, less predictable climate, small farmers will also need better access to other sorts of technologies and to markets, information and finance -- as well as better land tenure and improved agriculture infrastructure,” Graziano da Silva said.

He emphasized on the importance of prevention which is worth a pound of cure, arguing that adaptation to climate change makes economic sense.


“… The benefits of adaptation are much bigger than the costs," he declared, stressing that the importance of national efforts like the United Arab Emirates (UAE's) strategy on food diversification, security and climate change. 

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Pix: Dr Joseph Romanus Mukabana - Directotr Offices for Africa & Least Develped Countries WMO

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Lack of hand washing, kills over 300,000 in 2015 – UNICEF

The spate of cholera in aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti and with a new outbreak of war-in Yemen, have made it difficult for children, families and communities to make washing hands with soap a habit to help prevent the spread of diseases, says United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), reports NaijaAgroNet.

This is coming as UNICEF said over 300,000 lives should have been saved if hand washing has become a habit globally.

Chief of Communication for UNICEF Nigeria, Ms Doune Porter, told NaijaAgroNet that as the world celebrate the Global Handwashing Day, UNICEF has discovered that, in 2015 alone, over 300,000 children under the age of five died globally from diarrhoeal infections linked to poor access to safe drinking water and sanitation – a rate of over 800 per day.

“Yet many of these deaths could have been prevented through the simple act of handwashing with soap,” she said.

Porter quoted the UNICEF’s global head of water, sanitation and hygiene Sanjay Wijesekera as saying that every year, 1.4 million children are dying from largely preventable diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea.

“These are staggering numbers, but they could be greatly reduced by working with children and families to adopt a very straightforward solution – handwashing. We know, for example, that handwashing with soap before meals and after using the toilet could reduce the incidence of diarrhoeal infections by 40 per cent,” Sanjay said.

In addition, NaijaAgroNet gathered that a recent survey conducted by UNICEF in Nigeria found that about 10 per cent of households did not know about the critical times to wash hands and could not demonstrate proper handwashing techniques.


The survey, Porter further said revealed that only 12 per cent of households have handwashing facilities with soap or ash located at their latrines.

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