REPORTAGE
A joint report by the UNICEF and the WHO has revealed the appalling situation in our schools, where 900 million children do not have access to safe drinking water globally. It reminds us yet again of the risk that is inflicted on children due to the sheer negligence of governments globally.
The New Leam Staff
A report has recently found out that more than half the schools in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. This implies that we are putting at risk the lives of millions of children globally and this can also be an important reason why they might decide to remain absent from school than to attend it and fall sick.
The report states that in addition to lack of drinking water, many of the schools across the globe do not have toilets and facilities for children to wash their hands. There are more than 900 million children globally have to adjust to schools here these facilities are absent or have to go to school with the risk of falling sick. It is important to acknowledge the idea that schooling as a process cannot be welcoming, if basic facilities such as toilets and drinking water are unavailable in the premises of the school. World leaders have signed global pledges to make drinking water and other various basic facilities available to schools by 2030 in sync with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
A lack of clean surroundings and portable drinking water can lead to illness, infection and can cause death. It is a crucial matter that schools can no longer choose to negate. The Report that has been made by the UNICEF and WHO looked at these provisions in schools across the globe and discovered how millions of children have to risk their health in order to go ton school and how so many of them refrain from schooling due to the absence of such facilities.
The Report has found that more than one third of primary and secondary schools across the world did not have access to safe and reliable drinking water and this is affecting nearly 570 million children.
The Report also stated that more than 20 per cent of schools had no safe drinking water facilities at all. More than a third of schools lacked adequate toilet facilities putting at a risk, the well-being of 620 million children.
Almost one in five primary schools and one in eight secondary schools were considered to have no sanitation infrastructure that could be used by children and their staff. It is ironic that more than half the schools did not even have access to hand-washing facilities, making children vulnerable to several diseases.
Nearly half lacked proper hand washing facilities, essential for helping prevent the spread of infections and disease. This means that nearly 900 million children were affected, the report found. The time has come to treat water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure as a central priority within nation – states.
Surely if nation-states desire and strive to work towards making schooling equipped with minimum infrastructural arrangement like drinking water and toilet, it is a simple task to accomplish. After all if we are putting at risk the lives of 900 million children globally, we must acknowledge the gravity of the matter.
