This was revealed by the chief of Water Sanitation and Hygiene, WASH, UNICEF Nigeria, Zaid Jurji, in collaboration with‎ the recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2016/17, which also indicated that about 40 per cent of households do not have access to clean water sources.
‎He said: “For Nigeria to achieve the global goal of providing access to safe water for every citizen by 2030, it needs to make water, together with sanitation and hygiene, a national priority.
This goal is closely linked with three key results for the country – good health, environment sustainability and economic prosperity.
‎”Access to safe drinking water remains a challenge to majority of Nigerians, especially those living in the rural areas.
The recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), conducted by the Government of Nigeria in 2016/17, indicates that about 40 per cent of households and about 69 million people, do not have access to clean water sources.
“In the rural areas, 19 million people walk long distances to collect unsafe water from lakes, streams and rivers.
“Children without access to safe water are more likely to die in infancy and throughout childhood from water-borne diseases.
Diarrhoea remains the leading cause of death among children under five years of age in Nigeria.
“Waterborne diseases also contribute to stunting.
UNICEF, in collaboration with the federal, state and local governments, has provided safe water during the past five years to over eight million Nigerians living in rural areas.

A few weeks earlier, most of his playmates were infected and treated for cholera.
“In our village, we do not have water, hence, we fetch untreated water from the lake,” confessed Kalala’s father, Martin Ntoumba.
Contaminated water Ngandanjika and Kalambayi are currently the two health zones in Lomami where most cholera deaths and confirmed cases are being reported.
The only market—located in Matamba, in the Kanda-Kanda health zone—which is visited by nearly 5,000 people on a weekly basis, has neither water points nor toilets.
“In rural areas where the epidemic has found a fertile ground due to acute water shortages and poor sanitation practices, people hardly differentiate between safe water and contaminated water,” said Malick Faye, IFRC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Regional Disaster Response Team member (RDRT).
“Beyond these realities and constraints, the wells from which communities fetch water are unprotected and, in a context where open defecation is common, the water points are easily contaminated by human waste,” he added.
The burden of providing water to families rests with women who are often helped by their children.
Red Cross volunteers promote safe practices With many communities in DRC having no access to clean drinking water, hygiene and sanitation, disseminating messages of good practices on cholera prevention techniques remains central to an effective response.
Between January and March 2018, the DRC Red Cross was at the forefront, providing lifesaving sensitization messages on cholera, reaching 213,329 people with safe practices in water, sanitation and hygiene in five health zones of the Lomami province, namely Kabinda, Kanda-Kanda, Kamiji, Ngandanjika and Kalambayi.
“We deployed 192 volunteers in affected health zones to spread awareness messages around cholera, and ensure communities are safe, with communities in remote areas being our main target,” said Joseph Kanyinda, vice-president of the Mwene-Ditu Red Cross Branch.

For more than 80 per cent of Ontarians who get their drinking water from the Great Lakes, now is the time to think about Racine, Wisconsin.
It’s there that officials are considering whether to grant Foxconn, a major Taiwanese electronics company, access to water from Lake Michigan for the purpose of manufacturing LCD panels.
Or Wikwemikong.
Or Wasaga Beach.
The city of Racine has filed what’s known a diversion application — an official request to access millions of gallons of Great Lakes water per day.
Of that 7 million gallons per day, 4.3 million would be returned to the Great Lakes in the form of treated wastewater.
The decision to grant Racine’s request rests with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The international agreement that governs the use of Great Lakes water — the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact — allows communities that abut two basins to request water from the Great Lakes for areas that might fall beyond the dividing line.
No matter where these diversions are happening, they have an impact on the Great Lakes basin,” says Wilson.
A diversion request from Waukesha, Wisconsin, for example, was granted in 2016.

FLINT, MI — Bottled water has officially ended for Flint residents.
"Given the current demand for bottled water over the last several days, the supply has been exhausted," reads an April 10 MDEQ statement.
"The four (PODs) are now permanently closed and will not reopen.
Officials announced Friday, April 6, it was ending the free water program after testing showed Flint’s water quality was below federal action levels for lead for nearly two years.
The news sent residents rushing to the sites to stock up on water before the state-funded supply ran out, with officials estimating the current supply would last for a week at most.
Flint’s supply of bottled water has been an issue since Gov.
The water crisis unfolded while the city was run by a series of emergency managers, appointed by Snyder, putting pressure on the state to clean-up the water system and provide safe drinking water in the interim.
In a news conference Monday, Weaver called the state’s bottled water decision "really sad" and "insensitive to the people," and said she had requested a meeting to discuss the issue further with Snyder.
It was Snyder who recognized a water emergency in Flint in January 2016, after emergency managers he appointed made a series of decisions to change the city’s water source to the Flint River in April 2014.
Snyder’s April 6 letter to Weaver says that state taxpayers have provided more than $350 million for water quality improvements, pipe replacements, health care, nutritional food distribution, educational resources and job training since he recognized the water emergency.

Thousands of children who were exposed to lead in Flint’s drinking water would get access to more health screenings and education services under a deal announced Monday.
Families will be encouraged to get kids signed up on a registry, which will lead to tests and screenings to determine any unique education needs, according to an agreement that partially settles a federal lawsuit against the state of Michigan, the Flint school district and a regional education agency.
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"The community needs to understand completely the opportunities that are available," he said.
The corrosive water wasn’t properly treated before it moved through old plumbing.
There is no safe lead level in the human body.
Little said certain education services are guaranteed under federal law once a special need has been identified.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, who helped expose Flint’s lead mess in 2015, said lead can’t be directly linked to every development problem in area kids.
Rick Snyder said free bottled water in Flint would end soon.
___ This story has been corrected to fix headquarters of Education Law Center to New Jersey, not Pennsylvania.

Tapping The Great Lakes, a documentary from Detroit Public TV and Great Lakes Now released in March 2018, offers a bit of perspective by juxtaposing Wisconsin’s water controversies with another in Michigan related to bottled-water operations.
Michigan-based environmental activists including Jim Olson and Peggy Case speak in Tapping The Great Lakes about how, in the 18 contentious years Nestlé has been pumping water in the state (something it had initially hoped to do in Wisconsin), surface waters near the company’s wells have changed.
Each Party shall have the discretion, within its jurisdiction, to determine the treatment of Proposals to Withdraw Water and to remove it from the Basin in any container of 5.7 gallons or less.” Given this rule, if Nestlé or another business wants to sell water sourced within the Great Lakes Basin in small bottles, it’s largely an individual state’s decision whether or not to allow it.
When the city of Waukesha sought to tap Lake Michigan for its drinking water supply, though, it took the unanimous approval of the governors of all eight Great Lakes states, in their capacity as the Great Lakes Compact Council.
That’s because the city isn’t in the Basin at all, but is within Waukesha County, which straddles its boundary.
Waukesha argued that the radium tainting its groundwater and the depletion of its groundwater supply (which in turn made the contamination worse) left it with no other option.
What happens with more Waukeshas, more Nestlés, more industrial users like Foxconn?
Michigan U.S. Rep Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, said in Tapping The Great Lakes that Waukesha started out claiming that it needed Lake Michigan water because of radium contamination, not because of the depletion of those groundwater reserves.
In 2010, Waukesha asked to use 10.9 million gallons per day — far more than it’s using in 2018 — then walked their request back to 8.2 million gallons per day and proposed using it in a smaller service area.
Do the Compact and state and federal laws make it too easy for businesses and certain communities to misuse a resource that belongs to the people of the Great Lakes Basin?

PIPAVAHA: As a part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, APM Terminals Pipavav has installed Water ATMs in 12 villages around the port to provide access to safe and clean drinking water.
Under the program- Safe Drinking Water for All, APM Terminals Pipavav has provided healthy water bottles along with clean drinking water that will decrease water borne diseases.
During the first year of the project significant decrease in diarrhea, stomach pain and joint pain etc is reported in the project areas.
Water ATM is an automated water vending machine that dispenses clean RO filtered chilled drinking water.
APM terminals Pipavav in partnership with Piramal Water Private Limited has installed water ATMs to increase and cultivate the habit of consuming clean water and reduce the maladies caused by water sanitation like jaundice, diarrhea, typhoid etc.
Keld Pedersen, Managing Director, APM Terminals Pipavav said, “United Nations has recognized the access to clean water as a basic human right.
We, at APM Terminals Pipavav understand the importance of hygienic water for the overall health of villagers.
We are happy to be a part of this initiative of providing access to safe and healthy drinking water to villagers through water ATMs.” These ATMs are installed for the villagers in Juni Mandardi, Ningala, Jolapur, Hadmatiya, Untiya, Juni Barpatoli, Navi Barpatoli, Khumbhariya, Mota Agariya, Rajparda, Chatadiya and Navi Mandardi.

A study conducted during the worst Ebola virus epidemic on record identified risk factors for transmission of the disease among household contacts, along with other factors that can be protective, including access to piped drinking water.
For their study, Mary R. Reichler, MD, researcher in the CDC Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, and colleagues enrolled 150 Ebola patients and 845 of their household contacts in and around the capital of Freetown, Sierra Leone, which saw widespread transmission during the West African Ebola epidemic.
Study participants were enrolled from Dec. 15, 2014 — just after the peak of the Freetown epidemic — through April 30, 2015.
Among the 838 household contacts included in the study, 9.9% developed Ebola, including 74 confirmed and nine probable cases, Reichler and colleagues reported.
Less than 1% of the contacts reported touching the body of an index patient after their death — a major risk factor for infection because most Ebola patients die at peak viremia, the researchers noted.
According to their analysis, the risk for household transmission among study participants was 3.5-fold higher when an index patient died.
The household transmission rate was also higher when an index patient had symptoms of Ebola infection but no reported fever, spent more days with wet symptoms — vomiting, diarrhea or bleeding — or was aged younger than 20 years.
According to Reichler and colleagues, avoiding the index patient and having access to piped drinking water — likely because it facilitated better hygiene practices — were associated with lower transmission rates.
They said efforts to minimize contact with Ebola patients by designating one care provider per household could minimize the risk in future outbreaks.
“These could include optimizing community educational messaging about risk factors and protective measures, increasing suspicion of [Ebola virus disease] based on the presence of symptoms with or without fever, and developing approaches to prioritize identifying and managing high-risk contacts.” – by Gerard Gallagher Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.

Sen David Japan has committed to help Cambodia’s urban populations gain access to a safe, affordable and sustainable water supply, with the government confirming that 85 percent of urban populations currently have access to clean water.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency yesterday signed an agreement with the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft on a project to strengthen the administrative capacity of urban water supply service in Cambodia.
According to a JICA press release, the project aims to strengthen governance of urban water supply services and will contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations.
“By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all in accordance with the national strategic development plan,” it said.
“By 2025, 100 percent of urban populations will have access to a safe, affordable and sustainable water supply.” Prak Prakat, director general of the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft’s potable water supply department, said yesterday that 85 percent of urban populations had access to clean water and by 2025, the government expected that more than 100 percent of urban populations would have access.
“This JICA project with the Ministry of Industry and Handicraft is for five years.
Most of the project focuses on human training in the water supply sector,” he said.
Yuichi Sugano, chief representative of JICA, said that in the urban water supply sector, JICA has long been one of Cambodia’s major development partners and has contributed both physical and soft infrastructure.
“Several water treatment facilities have been built in Phnom Penh and many provinces such as Siem Reap, Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kampot, Pursat and Sihanoukville,” he said.
“The signing of this cooperation agreement is the fourth project that JICA has worked on in the sector in Cambodia since 2003.” Mr Sugano said the project was expected to officially begin the middle of this year, adding that it reflected the commitment of the Cambodian and Japanese governments to strengthen cooperation in the development of the urban water supply sector in Cambodia.

After Michigan’s governor announced the state will stop providing free bottled water to residents of Flint — afflicted four years ago by lead-tainted drinking water — churches and charities said Monday they’re bracing for a surge in people seeking help.
The church has been handing out bottled water for the past three years, and typically sees about 100 to 200 cars a week.
The city’s water has tested below the federal lead and copper limit of 15 parts per billion (ppb) for about two years, state officials said.
Residents and local officials criticized the move, noting that many in the city of 100,000 remain distrustful after their water supply was contaminated with lead for 18 months.
That untreated river water leached lead from pipes into Flint’s drinking supply, and later tests showed high lead levels in some local schoolchildren.
"Free bottled water should be provided to the people of Flint until the last known lead-tainted pipe has been replaced."
Calvary Church, one of the houses of worship providing free bottled water, said there remains acrimony toward the state.
"There’s still the concern, there’s still the frustration," Davis said.
Flint resident Melissa Mays — who filed the lawsuit that led to a court-ordered agreement under which the state and federal governments are paying to replace pipes made from lead or galvanized steel — said she still cooks with bottled water.
Flint resident Mary Corbin told MLive.com that she also uses water in bottles for more than just drinking or cooking, but her personal hygiene as well.