Water Access, Sanitation - the Need for Sustainability

From Reuter's weekly Alertnet, March 18.

WATER: A briefing paper by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says [scores of millions of] dollars have been wasted on rural water projects in Africa, threatening the health and livelihoods of millions of vulnerable people. Tens of thousands of boreholes in rural areas have fallen into disrepair, depriving poor communities of water because donors, governments and nongovernmental organisations have built infrastructure but ignored the need to maintain it, IIED says. The International Committee of the Red Cross is also calling on governments to do more to ensure that people in conflict zones have access to safe water and decent sanitation. Environmenta! lists also see water supplies decreasing and say more than a billion people lack access to clean water, and 2.5 billion are without water for sanitation, with 80 percent of all disease borne by dirty water.