Literature Review
The crisis of water is considered to be a health crisis. Access to sanitation and safe water means the opportunity of improved health as well as the ability to fight water borne diseases. Moreover, proper accessibility to safe and clean water means improved health for both women as well as girls, who no longer have to find safer place to urinate. It increases dignity and also reduces psychological stress for women and girls. It also reduces the physical injuries caused to men and women by constant carrying and lifting loads of water (Clarke, 2013). At times, women and girls also have to face some serious troubles and assaults, while going to remote or dangerous areas in order to relieve themselves (Marmot et al., 2012).
The purpose of this report is to throw light on the topic of how water is currently affecting the world’s health and what are its possible solutions. In addition to this, the report focuses on existing articles and theses in order to present a clear idea of the current situation. Reviewing the secondary sources has helped in understanding the situation of women and how they get affected while collecting water. Marsalek et al. (2014) examined that women are however, disproportionately affected by the crisis of water, as they are responsible for collecting water from remote areas. Many a times, they get sexually harassed due to those dangerous and isolated zones. Moreover, lack of sanitation and water lock women in the poverty cycle, degrading their health as well. The report further discusses the issues which are connected with water scarcity; like hygiene, pollution, sanitation, aquatic life and others.
According to Pickering & Davis (2012), women as well as girls spend around forty billion hours a year to collect water from remote areas. Safe as well as readily available water is immensely important for the public health, be it for domestic use, drinking, recreational or food production purposes. Improved sanitation and water supply as well as better management of the water resources can help in boosting the economic growth of the countries. This in turn, will contribute greatly to the reduction of poverty. In the year 2010, the United Nations General Assembly recognized explicitly, the right of human beings to sanitation and water. Cosgrove & Rijsberman (2014) stated that each and every individual has the right to continuous, sufficient, safe, physically accessible and affordable water for both personal as well as domestic use.
In the year 2015, approximately 5.2 billion people were able to use safely managed water services, for domestic and drinking purposes. They used improved sources of water which were readily available to them and located on their premises. The water services were available when needed and moreover, it was clean and free from contamination. However, the remaining 2.1 billion individuals had to manage their daily activities without fresh and pollution free water. Over 1.3 million people had to depend on the water sources, which were located within the round trip of thirty minutes. Moreover, as per sources, 263 million people had limited water services and those were available far away from their residential areas (Meara et al., 2015).
Moreover, as per Pickering & Davis (2012), around 423 million people collects water from unprotected and wells that give rise to water borne diseases. In addition to this, over 159 million people collect water from untreated and unhygienic sources like lakes, streams, rivers and ponds. Sharp economic, socio cultural and geographic inequalities persist not only in the rural or urban areas, but also in the cities or towns, where people live in illegal settlements, informal or lower income segments. These individuals have lesser accessibility to improved and hygienic water sources, than the ones belonging to the middle, upper middle and higher classes. Jalava et al. (2014) mentioned in his paper that poor sanitation as well as contaminated water are linked with the transmission of water borne diseases like dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, polio and hepatitis A.
Inappropriately managed and inadequate water as well as sanitation services expose the individuals to fatal diseases, which has severe consequences over their health. According to Clarke (2013), this is particularly seen in the health care facilities where both staff members and patients are being placed with the additional risks of diseases and infection caused due to the lack of sanitation, hygiene and water services. Globally, around 15 percent of the patients develop infections during their stay at the hospitals, with a proportion greater than the lower income countries. The inadequate management of the industrial, agricultural and urban wastewater means that the drinking water of millions of individuals is chemically polluted or dangerously contaminated.
As per Conraads et al. (2012), around 842,000 individuals are estimated to die every year due to diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and many more diseases resulting from unsafe and unhygienic drinking water, hand hygiene as well as poor sanitation. However, diarrhea can be prevented at large, and also the deaths of around 360,000 young children can be avoided, if the water related risk factors were adequately addressed to the government officials. Moreover, where water is not adequately available, people may not consider hand washing as a priority, after sanitation or while eating foods. Therefore, this highly leads to fatal diseases like diarrhea, cholera and others.
However, diarrhea is considered to be the most widely known diseases which are linked to the contaminated water and food. In addition to this, there are other water borne diseases as well. Around 250 million people are highly affected by schistosomiasis, which is a chronic as well as acute disease caused by the parasitic worms and their exposure to the infested water. Moreover, Bain et al. (2013) opined that in major parts of the world, several harmful insects breed and live in water. They transmit and carry fatal diseases like dengue fever and others. Such diseases have the power to take the lives of many people as well. These insects, commonly known as vectors, instead of dirty water, prefer breeding in clean water. As a result, the household containers of drinking water serve as their breeding grounds.
The simple method of covering the containers of clean water with lids can reduce the vector breeding and also reduce the contamination of household water. According to Di Nardo et al. (2013), climate change, population growth, ever-increasing scarcity of water, demographic changes as well as urbanization pose a great threat to the supply systems of fresh water. By the year 2025, more than half of the world’s total population will live in the water stressed zones. Therefore, re-use of waste water can be an important strategy for recovering fresh nutrients in the water. The countries are increasingly using the waste water for irrigation as well as agricultural purposes. In developing countries, this particularly represents around 7 percent of the irrigated land. However, Garnett (2013) mentioned that if this practice of re-using water is done in an inappropriate manner, it will pose a great health risks.
As far as Piddock’s (2012) opinion is concerned, safely managed waste water can help in yielding multiple benefits, which also includes increased production of food. Options for the water sources that are used for irrigation and drinking purposes will constantly evolve, with the ever increasing reliance on the groundwater as well as alternative sources, which includes waste water. The climate change will further lead to the greater fluctuations in the harvested rain water. Therefore, management of all the water resources should be improved in order to ensure quality as well as provision. Readily and safely available water is considered to be of high importance for the welfare of the public.
According to World Health Organization, there needs to be an international authority over public health as well as water quality services. World Health Organization leads the global efforts of preventing the transmission of water borne diseases and thus, advising the governments to develop health based regulations and targets. The organization produces a number of guidelines related to the quality of the water, which includes safer usage of waste water for drinking and recreational purposes. The guidelines of water quality are totally based on managing the risks and since the year 2004, these guidelines included promotion of safety plans in order to prevent and identify the risks before the water gets contaminated (World Health Organization. 2014).
World Health Organization has been testing the household treatment procedures and products against the health based performance criteria. This is totally done through the organization’s international scheme of evaluating household treatment technologies of water. The main objective of this scheme is to ensure that these procedures and products provide protection to the users from pathogens, which cause the diarrheal diseases. Moreover, in order to strengthen these policies, proper monitoring is done for the appropriate usage of such products. In addition to this, World Health Organization works in collaboration with UNICEF in various areas concerning the health and water. This includes sanitation, water hygiene facilities, health care services and others (World Health Organization. 2014).
In the year 2015, both the agencies jointly developed a toll and named it WASH FIT that is, Water and Sanitation for Health Facility Improvement Tool. This was later considered to be an adaption of the safety plan approach for water and health hygiene. The objective of WASH FIT is to guide small and primary health care facilities in the lower and middle income settings by a continuous procedure of improvement through assessing, prioritizing of risks and defining specific as well as targeted actions (Hardoy, Mitlin & Satterthwaite, 2013).
According to World Health Organization (2014), there are still around 663 million people all across the world, who do not have proper accessibility to safe drinking water. In addition to this, around 2.2 billion people, that is, one sixth of the total world’s population, continue living without safety and dignity of adequate as well as appropriate sanitation facilities. Moreover, majority of the individuals, today, are still trapped in the poverty cycle and live without basic amenities of life. In the United States, the individuals take for granted that any expectant mother will get admitted to a healthcare institution with sanitation and running water. As per reports by the World Health Organization, around 40 percent of the healthcare or hospital facilities all around the world do not have proper and adequate accessibility to safe running water. In addition to this, almost 20% of the healthcare institutions do not even have basic sanitation facilities.
The wide studies have revealed the fact that around 54 lower and middle income counties do not even use soap for washing their hands. Washing hands with soap is one of the most cost effective as well as efficient techniques of preventing infection. Meara et al. (2015) mentioned this as lack of awareness and services, which leads people to compromise this ability of providing basic routine services. The individuals are not even aware of this fact and compromises on the ability of preventing and controlling infectious diseases. The dire and direct consequences of such conditions came into focus during the recent crisis in West Africa, when the people got affected by an infectious disease named Ebola. The higher mortality toll of this disease among the health workers got attributed in the parts of inadequate water sources as well as sanitation in the healthcare facilities.
According to Macedonio et al. (2012), designing customized solutions for each and every community will serve as a solution all throughout the procedure of water health and hygiene facilities. Moreover, additional facilities like education and work will improve the health of the individuals by raising awareness against water pollution. This in turn, will help in increasing productivity for the communities as well. In addition to this, the health of the individuals completely relies on the practice as well as awareness of sanitation, hygiene, healthy water and washing behaviors. A huge variety of approaches must be used for promoting hand washing through using soaps and clean sanitation facilities.
Volunteers must conduct campaigns for handing washing and induce this habit into younger as well as older section of the society. Individuals must be trained to promote healthy behaviors of washing hands before and after eating and sanitation. Campaigns must be held at neighborhood villages, hospitals, healthcare institutions and schools as well. Onda, LoBuglio & Bartram (2012) opined that awareness campaigns must be held regarding water pollution, open defecation and other unhygienic practices. Moreover, trainings must be given to the farmers regarding re-use of water in an appropriate manner. Clean water and basic sanitation facilities are considered to be an essential part for the development and survival of children as well as teenage girls. Therefore, proper care must be taken regarding this, by raising complete awareness (Richardson & Ternes, 2014).
In addition to this, Shatat, Worall & Riffat (2013) mentioned that rapidly growing population is decreasing the availability of water facilities. Climate change is also affecting the water sources and causing a crisis among urban poor. In developing countries, even millions of the city dwellers do not have regular accessibility to reliable, affordable and safe water as well as sanitation facilities. Alderman, Turner & Tong (2012) opined that the main reasons are poverty, lack of education and lack of awareness. The individuals are often paying more for water from the private sources. Increasing awareness and washing facilities in several rural areas will help in reducing the hygiene issues. Several organizations like WHO and UNICEF are working together to eradicate this menace out of the world.
Conclusion
To conclude, each and every individual have the right to access safe drinking water. However, poverty, lack of awareness and education has led to several issues like ever growing population, water pollution and many more. Poor and improper accessibility to the sufficient qualities of water have become the key factor in the water related diseases. Around one third of the world’s total population live in countries with high water stress and the issues with water scarcity are rising rapidly. Moreover, in many parts of the world, individuals still consume contaminated water, which affects their health to a large extent. Therefore, organizations need to be more efficient in this case and raise awareness among the rural people. They should work hand in hand in order to eradicate this menace out of the world.
References
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