Health implications of water scarcity
Globally, 785 million people lack access to safe water and 2 billion people don’t have a toilet. Nearly 1 million people die each year from dirty water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases, which could be reduced with access to safe water or proper sanitation. Lack of access to safe water also affects the physical well-being of women and children who have no choice but to carry heavy vessels long distances. More than ever access to safe water is critical to the health of families around the world.
Access to safe water directly helps the most vulnerable families around the world prepare and protect themselves from illness and disease. They experience improved health because access to safe water means they can practice good hygiene like handwashing, and they don’t have to leave their homes to collect water.
Better water, sanitation, and hygiene could save the lives of 297,000 children under the age of 5 each year. Safe drinking water is critical to the development of a healthy child. Access to clean water means that children are shielded from water-borne illnesses like typhoid and cholera. Diarrhea is one of the top three leading causes of children deaths and this is often triggered from consuming unclean water. A harsh reality is that Diarrhea and water-borne illnesses that causes dehydration and is a direct cause of a child mortality rate every 2 minutes. A lack of access to safe water and sanitation has also been linked to stunted growth and chronic malnutrition amongst children.
A lack of access to safe water and sanitation significantly affects the health of women as well. Burdened daily by finding water collection points and distance thereof, women and girls spend large amounts of time carrying heavy vessels and walking long distances. The physical strain of these activities impacts their health and if pregnant, the health of their unborn children.
1 million people die each year from dirty water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases.
One way of addressing this important issue is to have a facility on hand to harvest and store rainwater. Rainwater is one of the best sources of clean water that requires very little if any treatment, normally in the form of a rudimentary filtration system. The harsh reality is that in areas where it is needed most, the rainwater normally flows away without benefitting the community. We must take a leaf out of the Roman civilization’s book who built reservoirs and aqueducts to have water available for their occupants. It is sad to think that the technology, methods and experience existed to address this problem. Unfortunately, there is also another reality where a lack of political will, greed and corruption is stopping the implementation of life-saving projects that could address this humanitarian crisis. Areas that traditionally had access to clean water like the northern parts of the City of Tshwane in Gauteng are more and more at risk, due to lack of maintenance on existing water treatment facilities that supply the area. We cannot make the mistake of thinking that this problem is far away or that it will not affect us.
Join us on Thursday 22 October to see how you can plan ahead and safeguard your family against future water scarcity events by implementing a rainwater harvesting system to provide peace of mind when water scarcity looms and water becomes unavailable.
Find out more, join our Aqua Live Streaming Expo’s:
In our current series we are focusing on different applications for water tanks, in our quest to help you be the hero of your project story. As such the topics we discussed in the last two weeks were Aeration tanks and Agricultural tanks. If you missed those Expo’s you can fortunately still view them on Facebook and the Aquadam Steel Tanks International channel on YouTube. For the next two weeks we have two very interesting applications lined up, being Rainwater Harvesting and Fire water applications. Save the date in your calendar to ensure you don’t miss out!
Aqua Live Streaming Expo – Rainwater Harvesting, Thursday 22 October 2020, at 15:00 Central Africa Time
On 22 October we will be discussing Rainwater Harvesting, where it originated, and how it can be beneficial to you, irrespective of whether you dwell on a farm or within city limits. You may well wonder why you haven’t applied rainwater harvesting before, once you see how easy it is to save money and become self-sustainable.
Aqua Live Streaming Expo – Fire water,
on Thursday 29 October 2020, at 15:00
Fire water applications effects all of us on a daily basis, whether we are aware of it or not. Most, if not all shopping centers are required to have a readily available supply of fire water on hand for their hose reel and sprinkler systems. The same goes for big office buildings. 2024 Fire water systems normally consists of one or two dedicated fire tanks that must store enough water for an hour or more, so as to ensure that lives are saved and property damage is limited when a fire event happens. Werner Norval will lead us in this exciting application and explain the differences between a hose reel and a sprinkler system amongst other interesting facts.