By Leslie Hawthorne Klingler

In the United States, we have good reason to expect that our children will grow up healthy. A major reason why we can hope for a good future for our little ones is that we need not second-guess the quality of our water supply. Yet in many regions of the world, water is a silent enemy.

Communities without safe water constantly face serious threats to their children’s health:

• Disease
Unsafe water makes children sick. The World Health Organization estimates that 6,000 children die each day from water-related illnesses that most parents in the U.S. have scarcely heard of. These include cholera, dysentery, typhoid, guinea worm, and hepatitis. Any one of these diseases can devastate a community’s young population.

One of the most common symptoms of disease is diarrhea. Many children in the developing world live with constant diarrhea caused by water-related illnesses. The young ones are plagued by fatigue and weakened immune systems. It is almost impossible for children with diarrhea or their parents to keep the watery feces from contaminating other people. Disease spreads rapidly.

• Heavy labor
In communities without easy access to water, children are the ones designated to haul it long distances to their homes. Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon, so a child providing a family of four with a subSaharan average of 16 gallons per day must carry daily 128 pounds of water. Children must transport this heavy burden from water sources that are up to several miles away.

The heavy labor of carrying water often causes neck and back problems that afflict children their entire lives. Sending children long distances to retrieve water also puts them in danger of accidents and sexual assault.

• Lack of education
Children in communities lacking accessible clean water often miss school. The demands of retrieving water for their families leave little time or energy for studies. In addition, children are often too sick from water-related diseases to go to school, or embarrassing diarrhea keeps them home.

Safe water saves children’s lives
Safe water dramatically increases a child’s chances of reaching the age of five. It drastically improves a child’s health and quality of life. Yet, only half of the children in developing countries have access to this essential resource.

Fortunately, people around the world are recognizing that clean water can prevent childhood suffering and death. Lifewater and other organizations are strengthening their efforts to help people gain access to safe water, and global institutions are joining in the effort. In September 2000, the United Nations (UN) identified access to safe water as a top priority. As part of its Millennium Development Goals, the international body said it will work to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015.

Progress has been made. According to a UN 2005 update, since 1990 approximately eight percent of the developing world’s people received first-time access to clean water. Nonetheless, over one billion people still lack it.

As people around the world act on the conviction that too many children die from preventable diseases, parents in developing countries are defeating one of their worst enemies—unsafe water. Lifewater looks to the day when all communities will celebrate clean water as one of their children’s most important sources of life and health.