Women of the World Still Burdened with Most of the Water Carrying.
According to UNICEF, nearly 2.1 bn people globally experience the problems of not having enough clean water for drinking and performing daily activities, such as cooking, bathing, and cleaning.
What makes the statistics even more concerning is that a huge majority of the global rural population depends on its women to carry water from the nearest water source back to their homes.
Why This is a Problem The core problem lies in the unavailability of clean water, primarily, and the unavailability of clean water supplies within homes.
Water is a basic human right, and is mankind is extremely on it for not just development, but also survival.
Personal hygiene and healthy standards of living can be achieved when a home receives clean water on a regular basis.
On the other hand, the use of unclean and chemically unsafe water can cause serious problems, including intestinal worms, trachoma, diarrhea and related illnesses, along with more severe problems such as stunted growth.
The problems arise when the local water supply for rural areas, which is usually a nearby natural freshwater resource, gets contaminated with chemicals such as lead and arsenic.
Time Lost in Grunt Work In the daily life of a rural woman, collecting enough water for the day is easily the most time consuming task.
According to UNICEF, nearly 263 mn people do have access to clean drinking water, but need to spend a lot of time waiting in queues to get it.

Billions of People Still Lack a Safe Drinking Water Source.
Around 2.1 billion people don’t have immediate access to a safe water source in their homes, while 4.5 billion do not have a proper sanitation system.
As expected, most of these areas are found in rural regions.
This is worrying, since hygiene and proper sanitation of a water source shouldn’t be a privilege.
Everybody on Earth needs these to be healthy and live a good life.
We need to improve these services in all communities Since 2000, a lot of areas received a proper water source for their citizens.
This leads to them developing diseases which might turn out deadly.
Over 361,000 children younger than 5 die each year because of diarrhea, and are at risk of becoming infected with other diseases, such as typhoid fever, dysentery, or hepatitis A.
By doing this, we assure the safety and health of our future generations, and give them a chance to a better tomorrow even if they live in poorer areas.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

SONEPUR : Even four years after the foundation stone for drinking water project at Sonepur town was laid by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the project is yet to see the light of day.
Although Sonepur town is surrounded on three sides by rivers Mahanadi and Tel, water scarcity is reported from Viveka Nagar, Ramji Nagar, Gokarneswar, Patabhadi, Kulapada, Spinning Mill Chowk, Gridco Colony and Shanti Nagar even during monsoon.
The town, which has a population of about 25,000, requires 3.7 Million Litres Per Day (MLD).
Sources said the drinking water supply in the town was initiated in the late 80’s from Dasmathi Ghat of the Mahanadi river.
However, with the overhead tank failing to meet the water requirement, a new drinking water project was initiated at an estimated cost of Rs five crore and the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for an overhead tank on February 8, 2013.
It is envisaged to draw water from an intake well at Gokarneswar Ghat and pump it to two overhead tanks for supply after filtration.
First, it took about a year to finalise the tender while the work on the overhead tanks at Patabhadi and MLA Pada is yet to be completed.
To compound the problem, the contractor has left the work halfway.
Similarly, roads have been dug up from Nalin Chowk to Circuit House and Jail Chowk to Patabhadi to lay pipelines of the project.
But the work remains incomplete.

Buck fighting for conduit system to provide clean drinking water for Southeast Colorado.
But for many citizens of Southeastern Colorado, access to fresh drinking water is a challenge.
This important project will transfer fresh water from its source — the mountains that feed the Pueblo Reservoir — to the Southeastern plains.
You probably have heard of the Arkansas Valley Conduit already — the project was authorized by Congress in 1962, but slowed to a halt because local communities couldn’t fully fund their contribution.
But now our local communities are committed to completing the project.
Without an alternative water source, the cost for water providers to supply fresh water to the Lower Arkansas River Basin will be passed on to consumers.
The conduit will offer that alternative source of water.
The federal government will advance funds to local governments to help speed the project to completion and those local governments will repay those funds through contract payments for non-project water storage in the Pueblo Reservoir.
The conduit offers a solution to our drinking water issues in Southeastern Colorado, which is why I’m fighting in Washington to make sure the federal government provides the funding we need.
All Coloradans deserve clean drinking water.

Parched poor: No countryside for drinking water.
NEW DELHI: The war for water has spread to the well-quenched corridors of power.
About 140,000 children die in the country from diarrheal diseases each year, after using dirty water, says the latest WaterAid report.
For a government that is aiming to cover 80 per cent of the rural population by 2022, the drinking water ministry has admitted to its inability to achieve the target due to fast drying up of funds.
Already, the money flow for revival of the existing yet impoverished water sources is getting down to a trickle.
“The Budget Estimate of 2017-18 is Rs 6,050 crore.
If the government is to have pivotal role, we must continue National Rural Drinking Water Programme and must have annual funding as high as possible but at least to the tune of around Rs 16,900 annually—10 per cent incremental increase over Rs 10,500 crore provided during 2012-13.
However, the MoF is suggesting to restrict the requirement at the present BE level for 2017-18 and 10 per cent annual increase for the subsequent two years,” the draft Expenditure Finance Committee note, dated July 3, stated.
The Central government will have to pitch in if it wants to achieve the target of covering 80 per cent of the rural population with drinking water access by 2022 at a faster pace, according to a Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation note.
Thus there was a shortfall of about Rs 30,000 crore in this period itself ,” the ministry note said.

Parched poor: No countryside for drinking water.
NEW DELHI: The war for water has spread to the well-quenched corridors of power.
About 140,000 children die in the country from diarrheal diseases each year, after using dirty water, says the latest WaterAid report.
For a government that is aiming to cover 80 per cent of the rural population by 2022, the drinking water ministry has admitted to its inability to achieve the target due to fast drying up of funds.
Already, the money flow for revival of the existing yet impoverished water sources is getting down to a trickle.
“The Budget Estimate of 2017-18 is Rs 6,050 crore.
If the government is to have pivotal role, we must continue National Rural Drinking Water Programme and must have annual funding as high as possible but at least to the tune of around Rs 16,900 annually—10 per cent incremental increase over Rs 10,500 crore provided during 2012-13.
However, the MoF is suggesting to restrict the requirement at the present BE level for 2017-18 and 10 per cent annual increase for the subsequent two years,” the draft Expenditure Finance Committee note, dated July 3, stated.
The Central government will have to pitch in if it wants to achieve the target of covering 80 per cent of the rural population with drinking water access by 2022 at a faster pace, according to a Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation note.
Thus there was a shortfall of about Rs 30,000 crore in this period itself ,” the ministry note said.

Drinking water : 2.1 billion people are deprived of.
etrenard/Flickr Published the 15.07.2017 to 11: 05
Keywords : hygièneOMSunicefrapport Nothing has made more progress in medicine and lower the human mortality that hygiene measures.
This is why the united nations has set a goal of universal coverage of water needs.
Access to clean water, soap and sanitary safe is essential, but far from obvious, according to a report by the world health Organization (WHO), prepared with Unicef.
According to their estimates, 2.1 billion people would still lack access to safe drinking water in their homes, which represents 30 % of the world population.
A privilege “Having access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene at home should not be a privilege exclusively reserved for the rich living in urban areas, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-general.
These services are fundamental for human health and it is the responsibility of all countries to ensure that everyone can access.
“ But the road still seems long to address this inequality.
Because among those who do not have running water at home, 844 million would have not even a basic service of drinking water supply, 263 million living more than 30 minutes for the first water point, and 159 million continue to drink surface water from rivers or lakes.

10 Countries With the Worst Drinking Water.
More than a quarter of the world’s population – about 2.1 billion people – lack access to clean water, according to a report released this week by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
National data were available for about 100 countries in 2015, and these are the 10 with the least safely managed water supply.
Mexico Nearly three-quarters of people in Mexico drink packaged water, and the country is a world leader in consumption of bottled water per capita.
Pakistan Pakistan is the country with the greatest gap in basic hygiene between the richest and the poorest.
Ghana More than half of people in Ghana have limited sanitation services.
Cambodia Cambodia is one of 18 countries where at least 5 percent of the population relies on delivered water.
Nigeria Nigeria is one of the fastest improving countries when it comes to water quality, but 15 percent of people still drink from unimproved water sources.
Uganda Nearly 40 percent of people in Uganda need to travel more than 30 minutes to access safe drinking water.
Read about a program in Kenya that’s encouraging better sanitation, countries with the best public health care and check out more news, data and analysis on the U.S. News Best Countries site.

Drinking water still not flowing at state women’s prison.
The women at Lowell Correctional Institution will endure another three days without running drinking water after tests Thursday showed the water wasn’t safe to drink, officials said.
Coolers of water have been brought into the prison for inmates and staff, as crews began testing the drinking water over the past few days.
On Thursday, the inmates were allowed to drink the water for a time, after a test showed it was safe, Glady said.
Instead, it relies on a geo-thermal cooling system, which agency officials have admitted doesn’t work very well.
The prison — the largest women’s facility in the country — has had a history of sanitary problems, including worms and mold in the sinks and showers, health records show.
The prison, built in 1956, is the oldest prison housing female inmates, including pregnant women and youthful offenders.
It also houses women on death row.
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Is a healthy environment a human right?
While this may seem like an issue for legal scholars, it has very real importance for regions like Appalachia, where I work.
We view them that way at West Virginia University College of Law‘s new Appalachian Justice Initiative, which is working to secure a better future for our region.
It follows other, more established conceptions of human rights, such as civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights, and often is classified as part of a so-called third generation of “newer” human rights.
The coal industry has profoundly exploited our citizens and damaged our environment.
The most extreme example is mountaintop removal mining – blasting off mountaintops to reach coal seams, and then dumping refuse materials into valleys.
Coal mining is not the only challenge.
The core idea of environmental human rights is that people are entitled to live in a healthy, clean and safe environment.
Of course, laws and regulations are of little use if they are not robustly enforced.
Appalachia is not some “other America”: we are fundamentally interlinked with the United States and the wider world ecologically, economically and socially.