Over 180 million people lack drinking water in Nigeria, other countries facing conflicts – UNICEF.
Related News Over 180 million people living in countries affected by conflicts, violence and instability do not have access to basic drinking water, a new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has revealed.
These include over 3.6 million people in the north-east of Nigeria where the Boko Haram insurgency has damaged about 75 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure, the report noted.
The report, which was released Tuesday, is in commemoration of this year’s World Water Week holding August 27 to September 1.
The theme of the 2017 World Water Week is “Water and Waste – Reduce and Reuse”.
Around 15 million people in the country have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation.
“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”, the report states.
“In Yemen, for example, children make up more than 53 per cent of the over half a million cases of suspected cholera and acute watery diarrhoea reported so far.
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.
“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.