Problems for children

Children throughout the world suffer greatly because they don't have access to safe water and sanitation. Their health, education and family relationships are affected.

In many countries children, particularly girls, are responsible for the collection of water. Girls as young as 10 years old may take the main responsibility for drawing and carrying the family's water.

The size of the water container may vary with the size of the child, but each litre of water carried weighs 1kg and may need to be carried up to three or four miles.

Children carring water in Kuluunda, Malawi.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

Carrying such heavy weights is damaging in the long term for adult women, and for girls there are even more serious implications given their physical immaturity.

In particular, there can be damage to the head, neck and spine. In extreme cases deformity of the spine can lead to problems in pregnancy and childbirth.

Effect on education

The time required to collect water often means many children miss out on schooling.

Credit: WaterAid / Jenny Matthews

Collecting water is not only physically stressful but extremely time consuming. One of the most serious effects is that girls are often not able to attend school.

Many children who do manage to go to school have very low attendance figures and often drop out. Both boys and girls are needed by poor families to help either farming or in doing domestic tasks at home. They have little time to play.

The lack of adequate sanitation facilities in schools also prevents girls from attending school, particularly when they are menstruating. Of the 113 million children currently not enrolled in school worldwide, 60% are girls. Girls' attendance at school is increased through improved sanitation.

For example, in Bangladesh, a school sanitation programme has increased the enrolment of girls by 11% every year since it began in 1990.

Health matters

In areas where water is scarce children may not be able to wash often enough, resulting in disease.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Penn

Children are most vulnerable to the diseases that result from a lack of water, dirty water and poor sanitation. In developing countries each child has an average of ten attacks of diarrhoea before the age of five.

Malnourished children are more vulnerable to disease, and prone to diarrhoea, pneumonia, measles and malaria.

These four diseases, plus malnutrition, account for seven out of ten childhood deaths in developing countries. For example in Zambia, one in five children dies before their fifth birthday. In contrast in the UK less than 1% of children die before they reach the age of five.

Diarrhoea is the second most serious killer of children under five worldwide (after pneumonia) but in most cases it can be prevented or treated.

Children's ill health places an increased burden of care on the women and girls who look after them, adding to their already heavy workload.

This and the time spent collecting water can prevent women from earning money which can in turn mean they are unable to afford to send their children to school.

A lack of water also means that children cannot wash often enough and suffer from diseases as a result.

These include skin diseases like scabies and eye infections such as trachoma, the largest cause of preventable blindness in the developing world.

In the Kongwa District of Tanzania a trachoma research project found over 90% of school children were infected with the diseases. After treatment the disease nearly disappeared but in a few months it had returned.

Their conclusion was that treatment was not a long-term solution: educating people to regularly wash their face, hands and eyes was the best preventative measure. The problem was education and lack of water.

Providing children with clean and accessible water and toilet facilities changes their lives. Their health improves, they have more time with their families and more regular and varied meals.

They have time to go to school and gain an education, sometimes they have time to simply play.

So,would you help them?