admin
Water, sanitation and hygiene, commonly referred to by the acronym WASH, is an integral component of our daily living and survival.
WASH is crucial to human public health and well-being as it also significantly contributes to building resilient livelihoods under healthy environments.
Making clean and safe water available — with adequate quality and sufficient quantity — is therefore fundamental.
So enormous is this requirement at global level that Sustainable Development Goal 6 places top priority on it.
The importance of water security can, therefore, not be overemphasised as providing sustainable water services delivery is a primary objective of many governments across the world, Zimbabwe included.
Available research evidence proves that investing in water and sanitation interventions result in many benefits that include social, economic, and environmental as well as massive improvement in health and, consequently, the quality of life.
Prioritising WASH interventions can pay off handsomely as it reduces health care costs and also cuts on pollution of water and land resources.
Gains in quality of life are subsequently realised.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that improving service levels towards safely managed and regulated water or connections to sewers with wastewater treatment can dramatically improve communities’ health.
Elsewhere in this issue we carry a story on the latest development in Gimboki Phase One in Dangamvura, Mutare, where residents are set to finally have access to safe water following funding worth 247 000 Euros from a Dutch development partner, Vitens Evides International (VEI).
Individual connections are expected to be effected on at least 1 200 households.
This will certainly bring huge relief to the residents of the sprawling section of the high density suburb as they had endured years without the precious liquid.
Government should be commended for partnering Mutare City Council and VEI to ensure that this basic, yet essential service, is provided.
The initiative is in line with Vision 2030 as the country pursues the attainment of an empowered and prosperous upper middle income society by the year 2030.
It also feeds into Government’s development agenda across the entire country, which emphasises on leaving no one and no place behind.
Ensuring that the population gets easy access to clean and safe water is also provided for under the key priority areas of Health and Wellbeing as well as Environmental Protection, Climate Resilience and Natural Resources Management in the economic development and social transformation blueprint — National Development Strategy (NDS1) — which is the fuel driving Vision 2030.
Many are fervently anticipating that similar programmes will be spread to other parts of Manicaland Province that are grappling with the lack of provision of adequate and quality clean, safe water in their communities.
Besides being needed for human sustenance, water is also required for agriculture and food production.
This eventually enhances the livelihoods of communities and effectively ensures self-sufficiency.
Women and girls often carry the burden of fetching water for their families and these responsibilities negatively affect the girl child’s school attendance.
This creates gender inequalities in the long run.
On the other hand, clean water availability is critical in reducing disease incidence and the subsequent fatalities.
The outbreak of water-borne diseases like cholera, diarrhoea, typhoid and dysentery is effectively prevented when there is constant water supply in the communities.
Without safe water for drinking and other domestic uses, poor sanitation and hygiene practices often become common.
According to Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the universal access to clean and safe drinking water, as well as adequate sanitation and hygiene, has the potential to reduce the global disease burden by 10 percent.
Water is life and it is imperative that sustained efforts to harness this primary need are heightened in every community.
Online Reporter