Thus, cholera is endemic in South Sudan and requires an integrated and comprehensive approach that entails surveillance, patient care, optimal access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); social mobilization and complementary use of oral cholera vaccines.
The National cholera taskforce chaired by the Ministry of Health and co-chaired by WHO is leading the current response through its coordination, surveillance, case management, WASH, and social mobilization working groups.
At the sub-national level, cholera taskforce committees are coordinating the cholera response in locations with active transmission including Yirol East and Yirol West, Bor, Duk, Tonj East, Kapoeta South, Kapoeta North, and Kapoeta East.
WHO, UNICEF, and health cluster partners have delivered cholera kits for patient care in areas with active transmission.
WHO is enhancing WASH capacities in cholera treatment facilities through training, deployment of public health officers, and water quality surveillance in affected and at-risk areas.
Surveillance With support from WHO, the Ministry of Health has rolled out electronic and mobile reporting of cholera alerts as well as cholera case based line listing in all affected locations.
Out of the 544 140 doses secured by WHO in 2017, a total of 384 971 doses have been deployed.
There are no cholera cases reported from any of the sites where the oral cholera vaccines have been deployed in 2017.
An additional two million doses of oral cholera vaccines are required to mitigate the risk of cholera in high risk areas and to interrupt transmission in the areas with ongoing transmission.
We also support to surveillance and cholera investigation as well as case management by deployment of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs), Clinicians, and support to WASH in Cholera Treatment Centers (CTCs) and monitoring standards of care.

Yemen: Urgent Need for Improved Water and Sanitation to Curb Cholera in Abs District.
Water and sanitation was an issue even before the cholera outbreak, but it is especially concerning now.
Since then, the number of cholera cases has exploded, with MSF’s cholera treatment center in Abs town receiving as many as 462 patients in a single day—more than anywhere else in Yemen.
With more than 376,000 displaced people among an estimated population of two million, Hajjah hosts more displaced people than any other Yemeni governorate.
About a quarter of those displaced are sheltering in Abs district without access to basic services, often living in remote areas to reduce the chance of being targeted by airstrikes or caught up in other types of violence associated with the conflict.
In the cholera treatment centers set up by MSF in Hajjah governorate, teams are distributing disinfection kits, which include mops, brooms, soap, and chlorine tablets for purifying water supplies.
However, these activities are not being done systematically at present."
Even before the cholera outbreak, MSF teams in Abs rural hospital were seeing substantial increases in emergency consultations, pediatric admissions, and surgical interventions.
There have also been outbreaks of measles and whooping cough and peaks of malaria—all diseases that should be either limited or controlled.
In November 2016, MSF resumed its support to Abs hospital; currently MSF has 200 Yemeni staff and 12 international staff working there.

India: Donor Funds Two Salesian Missions Water Projects, Providing Access to Clean Water in Drought-Prone Villages.
(MissionNewswire) Water projects funded by a donor through Salesian Missions, the U.S development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco, are providing two villages in India access to clean water through its “Clean Water Initiative.” The Marathwada region in the state of Maharashtra often suffers from drought-like conditions leaving villagers without water for cooking, drinking and proper sanitation.
The newly funded projects will help to desilt wells and canals, repair or replace new water piping, and install new water tanks.
This project also funded a new drinking water tank for the residents of the village.
“The construction of these two water projects will greatly impact residents of these villages and provide them better access to clean, safe drinking water and water for cooking,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions.
According to Water.org, close to 77 million people do not have access to safe, clean water and 769 million have no sanitation services.
While India has made some progress in the supply of safe water, there remain gross disparities in safe water access across the country.
“Salesian Missions has made building wells and other projects that supply fresh, clean water a top priority for every community in every country in which Salesian missionaries work.” India is home to 25 percent of the world’s poor and more than 30 percent of the country’s population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
With the largest number of child laborers in the world, India has made significant progress the past eight years reducing the number of out-of-school children from 25 million to 8 million.
# Sources: Salesian Missions – Clean Water Initiative Water.org – India World Bank – India

Yarmamat Islam has taken water from three different sources: flood pits, water towers and taps.
Flood pits were still a common scene Hotan villages until the 1990s.
Many farmers still heavily depended on flood pits.
Local residents were finally liberated from the heavy labor of fetching water from flood pits and had more time to pasture and farm.
To supply high quality tap water to local residents, construction started again in the water treatment plants in Hotan this year.
This is one of the major projects led by the city of Beijing to aid Hotan’s development.
Beijing cadres in Xinjiang have come to understand the water quality in Hotan over the past six years.
An investment of 97.46 million yuan was raised by the Beijing municipal government to renovate collecting tanks, purify equipment, and monitor facilities in water treatment plants in Hotan, as of March.
Hotan people can finally drink healthy water.
"I never dreamt that I could drink water of such high quality," Yarmamat said.

NEW DELHI: Only 20.7% rural population is getting enough and safe pipe water supply to quench their thirst.
Ministry of Drinking Water of NDA government has candidly admitted that it may not achieve the target at this pace.
“Budget estimate of 2017-18 is Rs.6050 Crore.
Such level of funding by government of India is meager compared to the overall requirement to achieve Sustainable Development Goals- 2030.
However, Ministry of Finance is suggesting to restrict the requirement at the present BE level for 2017-18 and 10% annual increase for the subsequent 2 years,” the draft EFC note stated.
“The present status clearly shows that the achievement towards pipe water supply coverage -55 litres Per Capita Per Day (LPED) including stand posts is only 20.70% -in terms of population and 15.62% in terms of habitations.
Thus there was a shortfall of about Rs.30,000 Crores in this period itself ,” the Ministry note said.
The Ministry pointed out that as on March 31 2017, over 3.85 Lakh habitations are not covered with 40 LPED.
The Ministry estimates that it would require at least Rs.
6 Lakh Crore to meet the target.

UN: Yemen unlikely to get cholera vaccine as first planned.
U.N. officials said Tuesday that plans to ship as many as 1 million doses of cholera vaccine to Yemen are likely to be shelved over security, access and logistical challenges, even as the deadly caseload continues to balloon in parts of the war-torn country.
The U.N. aid coordination agency said Yemen’s suspected cholera caseload has surged past 313,000 and caused over 1,700 deaths, making it the world’s largest outbreak.
War has crippled Yemen’s health system, depleted access to safe drinking water and put millions on the brink of famine.
The Yemeni government is allied with a Saudi-led coalition that is battling Shiite Houthi rebels, who control the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen.
Cholera vaccine rollouts are not easy even in more peaceful situations.
The vaccines have to be kept in cold storage, and patients should receive a follow-up vaccination after the first one.
In Yemen, where cholera has now reached all 21 governorates, the vaccines have to be targeted to those areas most susceptible to new outbreaks.
However, there are many areas in the country where the trend line is moving up, and those areas are, as you would imagine, the most remote," or behind conflict lines.
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Signs of water stress are now everywhere, and residents in southern and western parts of the city have not received a regular, reliable water supply for months.
Assuming a household has five members, this means some 130 litres per capita per day should be available every day.
This plan is hampered by several basic problems.
Currently, some neighbourhoods have access to water just one to two hours a day Reliable data on individual consumption is not available, as numerous households in Delhi still lack functional meters, but leakage, thefts and losses also reduce the available water supply.
In 2016, the Delhi Jal Board (the hindi word jal means water), which is responsible for the city’s drinking and waste water management, estimated total distribution losses of around 40%.
As the country’s middle class continues to grow, the need to build awareness of water as a scarce resource and instil conservation practices among the citizenry will grow more urgent.
The Yamuna River, near Delhi, is an important source of drinking water for downstream cities.
To fulfil such gargantuan tasks satisfactorily and develop a strategic plan for the future, a term of six to eight years would be more reasonable.
Making Delhi sustainable Here’s the good news: for the first time in at least two decades, the Delhi Jal Board seems to have competent and effective leadership.
If successfully completed, Delhi’s wetlands pilot may be replicable in the many other Indian cities facing water shortages thanks in part to polluted waterways.

World Population Day 2017: What can we learn from Bangladesh?.
Close on the heels of my blog, a New York Times article asserted that the “population bomb” was ticking for Lesotho and that, along with a series of droughts, it would all but take the country down.
But Lesotho simply does not deserve the epithet of a “cursed nation” that the article confers upon it.
While Bangladesh’s success in fertility decline has already been well-covered, it deserves repeating.
That’s because it holds a lesson for both high fertility countries in Africa and for those who portend a future of doom for those countries.
We noted that a robust family planning program provided door-step delivery of contraceptives to women who had traditionally been in seclusion.
Access to birth control gives women more than control over their fertility – it gives them control over their lives and it gives them choice.
In Bangladesh, control over childbearing improved both women’s health and the health of their children.
And an increase in girls’ education meant that younger mothers were better able to care for themselves and their children, compared to previous generations.
On World Population Day, the world would do well to look at the example of Bangladesh, where family planning went hand in hand with women’s empowerment more generally.

India: Donor Funds Two Salesian Missions Water Projects, Providing Access to Clean Water in Drought-Prone Villages.
(MissionNewswire) Water projects funded by a donor through Salesian Missions, the U.S development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco, are providing two villages in India access to clean water through its “Clean Water Initiative.” The Marathwada region in the state of Maharashtra often suffers from drought-like conditions leaving villagers without water for cooking, drinking and proper sanitation.
The newly funded projects will help to desilt wells and canals, repair or replace new water piping, and install new water tanks.
This project also funded a new drinking water tank for the residents of the village.
“The construction of these two water projects will greatly impact residents of these villages and provide them better access to clean, safe drinking water and water for cooking,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions.
According to Water.org, close to 77 million people do not have access to safe, clean water and 769 million have no sanitation services.
While India has made some progress in the supply of safe water, there remain gross disparities in safe water access across the country.
“Salesian Missions has made building wells and other projects that supply fresh, clean water a top priority for every community in every country in which Salesian missionaries work.” India is home to 25 percent of the world’s poor and more than 30 percent of the country’s population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank.
With the largest number of child laborers in the world, India has made significant progress the past eight years reducing the number of out-of-school children from 25 million to 8 million.
# Sources: Salesian Missions – Clean Water Initiative Water.org – India World Bank – India

Yet, every year more than one million people die from diarrhoea as a direct result of poor access to clean water and inadequate sanitation.
Extra efforts and additional funds are needed more than ever to transform how we use and conserve our precious water resources.
Implementing the human right to water If nice words, laudable principles or good intentions solved water problems then all would be well in the world of water.
Investments in water security for the present and the future must be one of these global priorities.
These actions are: firstly, to secure the delivery of basin water needs for people; secondly, to secure improvements in the condition of watersheds, streams, rivers and aquifers; and finally, to secure better water planning, management and governance.
Inspired by the Green Carbon Fund that was established by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, the Founding Signatories to the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security categorically state that the world needs a Global Human Water Security Fund.
For just one cent per person per day, the world could establish a Fund that would invest an additional US$27 billion per year in water actions to secure basic human water needs, improve watersheds and water quality, and deliver better water governance.
The alternative is to invest in water for people and water for the future.
For the Founding Signatories of the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security the creation of a Global Water Fund to deliver on the Three Global Actions is fundamental to our common future.
The Geneva Actions on Human Water Security is a statement of intent and one that the governments, civil society, the private sector, and all of us, need to back up with meaningful actions.