(Adds U.N. figures, paragraphs 5 to 7) YAOUNDE, Aug 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The Middle East and North Africa region loses about $21 billion each year because of an inadequate supply of water and sanitation, the World Bank said on Tuesday, warning urgent action is needed to prevent ripple effects on stability and growth.
“As the current conflict and migration crisis unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa shows, failure to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people’s well-being and political stability,” the report said.
In Yemen, which is reeling from more than two years of conflict, water supply networks serving its largest cities are at risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair, and about 15 million people have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation, the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) said in a separate statement on Tuesday.
Overall, 183 million people lack access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world, it added.
With the urban population in the Middle East and North Africa expected to double by 2050 to nearly 400 million, a combination of policy, technology and water management tools should be used to improve the water situation, the World Bank report said.
“Water productivity – in other words, how much return you get for every drop of water used – in the Middle East in general is the lowest on average in the world,” said Anders Jägerskog, a specialist in water resources management at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.
Water governance – in particular, water tariffs and subsidies – must also be addressed, he said.
The region has the world’s lowest water tariffs and spends the highest proportion of GDP on public water subsidies.
Such policies lead to excessive use of already scarce water supplies and are not sustainable, said Jägerskog.
Another challenge is that more than half of the wastewater collected in the region is fed back into the environment untreated.

Updated | In the coming weeks and even months, residents of Houston and other parts of southern Texas hit hard by Hurricane Harvey will be faced with the public health disasters that can result from dirty floodwater and landslides.
Chris Van Deusen, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, says officials are already making efforts to address the emerging public health nightmare.
State and local officials recommend that people avoid drinking tap water, as health officials always do after a hurricane.
This means that drinking water has now come into contact with dirty floodwater.
Tosh also cautions the public about the risk of Legionnaires’ disease, which is caused by Legionella, bacteria found in in freshwater that easily spreads to human-made water systems during floods.
Legionnaires’ disease causes pneumonia-type symptoms as well as gastrointestinal illness and headaches.
Many bacterial illnesses resolve on their own, but some require antibiotics.
Officials in Houston are stocking temporary medical mobile units with such antibiotics as well as tetanus vaccines to treat and prevent bacterial infections, says Van Deusen.
Floodwaters also impact indoor environments and make houses especially hospitable to mold.
The state is also in the throes of mosquito season.

Yemen’s unsung heroes in the battle against cholera.
The cholera epidemic that has ravaged war-torn Yemen has been declining for the past two months because of an unprecedented response by "unsung local heroes", the United Nations said on Tuesday.
Due to the efforts of thousands of local volunteers backed up by UN agencies, the weekly number of suspected new cases of cholera had fallen by a third since the end of June, the Unicef said.
The United Nations has called Yemen the "largest humanitarian crisis in the world".
On August 14, the World Health Organisation said that cholera is believed to have affected more than 500,000 people and killed nearly 2,000 in Yemen since late April.
According to Unicef, more than half of suspected cases were children.
"Amid the suffering, ordinary Yemenis are leading a heroic daily fight against acute watery diarrhoea and cholera which is now paying off," the Unicef statement said.
"Massive collective efforts to treat the sick and improve water and sanitation systems have helped slow the spread of the disease," it said.
An estimated 8,400 people have been killed and 48,000 wounded since the civil war erupted.
_________________ Read more: How cholera outbreak is adding to Yemen’s woes Coalition requests UN control of Sanaa airport to enable relief flights More than 1 million malnourished children in Yemen at risk of cholera _________________

Children’s access to safe water and sanitation is a right, not a privilege – UNICEF.
“Children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who warned, as World Water Week gets underway, that more than 180 million people in crisis-torn countries have no access to drinking water.
UNICEF said that in Yemen, a country reeling from the impact of over two years of conflict, water supply networks that serve the country’s largest cities are at imminent risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair.
Around 15 million people in the country have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation.
As for Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, around 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children.
The UN agency adds that in South Sudan, where fighting has raged for over three years, almost half the water points across the country have been damaged or completely destroyed.
“In far too many cases, water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse.
Somalia is suffering from the largest outbreak of cholera in the last five years, with nearly 77,000 cases of suspected cholera/acute watery diarrhoea.
And in South Sudan, the cholera outbreak is the most severe the country has ever experienced, with more than 19,000 cases since June 2016, said UNICEF.
In famine-threatened north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, are in urgent need of safe water.

Michael Phelps joins campaign to help all of us have clean water.
But the Olympic swimming champion and Paradise Valley resident realizes not everyone is fortunate enough to have sufficient clean water for everyday necessities, let alone enough to swim in.
That’s why he’s teaming with Colgate to help raise awareness about wasting water.
“Water is the Earth’s most precious resource, but without realizing it we often take it for granted,” Phelps said in a written statement.
The 23-time Olympic gold medalist is lending his voice and image to a documentary series called “Tales of Two Minutes.” The name highlights the fact that people can waste as much as four gallons of water in the two minutes it takes to brush their teeth if they leave the water running.
The short films, which appear on Colgate’s YouTube channel, showcase stories from across the nation that can change the way we view water.
The first film in the series highlights the extreme water scarcity at St. Michaels Association for Special Education, the only special-needs school in St. Michaels, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation.
Due to a lack of clean drinking water at the school, students and faculty needed to bring bottled water not only to drink but for basic hygiene and to clean the medical equipment needed by some of the students and adults who attend.
Efforts to improve the situation are starting to pay off.
“As a result of this project, eventually we’re going to have a total water-filtration system for the entire school.

Global Emergency Overview Weekly Picks, 29 August 2017.
Myanmar The conflict in Rakhine state has escalated following a coordinated attack on police and military posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army on 25 August.
Over 5,200 Rohingya have fled violence to Bangladesh but only the most vulnerable where allowed to cross the border while an unknown number have been turned away.
The government has evacuated 4,000 non-Muslim ethnic Rakhine villagers from the area due to insecurity.
Non-essential UN staff are also being evacuated.
Chad A cholera outbreak was declared on 15 August in three localities of the Koukou district in Sila region with a total of 116 cases, including 17 deaths (CFR: 14.7 %) as of 24 August.
Heavy rain is constraining road access to the region and could also lead to the emergence of further waterborne diseases such as malaria.
In addition, poor access to safe drinking water coupled with insufficient food production in the affected area are increasing the vulnerability of both the local and displaced population.

180 million people lack safe water in conflict-affected countries: Unicef.
New York: More than 180 million people in countries affected by conflict and instability do not have access to safe water, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) announced on Tuesday.
“In countries beset by violence, displacement, conflict and instability, children’s most basic means of survival – water – must be a priority,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, Unicef’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene.
In a statement released to mark World Water Week, held this year from August 27 to September 1, Wijesekera asserted that “children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege”, reports Efe news.
A latest Unicef analysis, conducted with the World Health Organisation (WHO), found that in 2015, out of some 484 million people living in fragile situations, 183 million lacked basic drinking water services.
“In 2016 alone, there were at least 30 deliberate water cuts – including in Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Raqqa and Dara, with pumps destroyed and water sources contaminated,” the Unicef said.
It also underscored the case of Nigeria, where conflicts have damaged or destroyed 75 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure, leaving 3.6 million people without basic water services, leading to malnutrition and diseases.
“When children have no safe water to drink, and when health systems are left in ruins, malnutrition and potentially fatal diseases like cholera will inevitably follow,” Wijesekera said.
In Yemen, more than 53 per cent of the 500,000 cases of suspected cholera and acute watery diarrhoea have been recorded in children so far.
Unicef also warned of the threat of famine in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, where nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, urgently require access to safe water.

Start date revealed for Paluma water treatment facility.
CRS Water will undertake the $550,000 project to provide quality drinking water to the 75 homes.
However, the council was able to reduce that by about $750,000, it was revealed at yesterday’s full council meeting.
Paluma Inn owner Jenny Robinson, who has lived in the community for about five years, said she had hoped the water problem would have been fixed by Christmas.
“Water has always been an issue,” she said.
“We’ve just tried to avoid it; we’ve been buying bottled water,” she said.
“I attended the two main meetings when the mayor was here.
People don’t know the work behind getting it this far.” When asked whether she was pleased that less of a burden had been placed on ratepayers, Ms Robinson said she hoped the lower-cost plant would do the same job.
“It will save us some money; we want to see how it goes.
“It will be nice to turn the tap on and drink water.” Water and Waste Committee chairman Councillor Paul Jacob said the project had been a long time coming, having been initially broached about four years ago.

Michael Phelps joins campaign to help all of us have clean water.
But the Olympic swimming champion and Paradise Valley resident realizes not everyone is fortunate enough to have sufficient clean water for everyday necessities, let alone enough to swim in.
That’s why he’s teaming with Colgate to help raise awareness about wasting water.
“Water is the Earth’s most precious resource, but without realizing it we often take it for granted,” Phelps said in a written statement.
The 23-time Olympic gold medalist is lending his voice and image to a documentary series called “Tales of Two Minutes.” The name highlights the fact that people can waste as much as four gallons of water in the two minutes it takes to brush their teeth if they leave the water running.
The short films, which appear on Colgate’s YouTube channel, showcase stories from across the nation that can change the way we view water.
The first film in the series highlights the extreme water scarcity at St. Michaels Association for Special Education, the only special-needs school in St. Michaels, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation.
Due to a lack of clean drinking water at the school, students and faculty needed to bring bottled water not only to drink but for basic hygiene and to clean the medical equipment needed by some of the students and adults who attend.
Efforts to improve the situation are starting to pay off.
“As a result of this project, eventually we’re going to have a total water-filtration system for the entire school.

Over 180 million people lack access to basic drinking water – UNICEF.
More than 180 million people do not have access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world, the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has said.
UNICEF stated this on Monday as World Water Week gets closer adding that children living in fragile situations are four times more likely to lack access to basic drinking water.
UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene Sanjay Wijesekera said children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right and not a privilege.
“In countries beset by violence, displacement, conflict and instability, children’s most basic means of survival, water must be a priority.” A recent analysis by UNICEF and World Health Organisation revealed that of the estimated 484 million people living in fragile situations in 2015, 183 million lacked basic drinking water services as people living in fragile situations are four times more likely to lack basic drinking water than populations in non-fragile situations, “In conflict affected areas in northeast Nigeria, 75 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, leaving 3.6 million people without even basic water services.
In South Sudan, where fighting has raged for over three years, almost half the water points across the country have been damaged or completely destroyed.” Wijesekera said, in many cases, water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse adding that when children have no safe water to drink, and when health systems are left in ruins, malnutrition and potentially fatal diseases like cholera will inevitably follow.
“In famine-threatened northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, are in urgent need of safe water.
More than 5 million children are estimated to be malnourished this year, with 1.4 million severely so.”