Waterless world

TRY not to go through one day without drinking water and you’ll understand why there are people who dig up even their own backyards in a vain attempt to find water. That’s what residents in a remote island down south had been reduced to doing for years — until workers from a multisectoral program landed on their shores and agreed to build them a solar-powered water system. Now they’ve not only let go of their picks and shovels, they are also feeling a lot healthier.

GONE are the days when women spent time and labor to get water from a murky well.
[photo courtesy of AMORE]

The United Nations Development Programme, in fact, says that worldwide, some two million children die each year from unsafe drinking water, and diarrhea is said to kill far more people annually than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. And while the town mayor says residents on the island had become used to the murky water their wells wielded, many of them often fell ill anyway because of waterborne diseases like cholera and diarrhea.

The most recent official statistics say that just a little more than 80 percent of households nationwide have “sustainable access to improved water source.” In Sulu, the situation is more like nearly 70 percent of the population without access to potable water. The latest piece in i Report‘s MDG series shows the impact of such in a place that is already impoverished. The dispatch, however, also chronicles the improvements in the lives of the people of Kahikukuk island after they finally get a clean water supply.

Read on at pcij.org.