Having arrived in the village of Goura in Cameroon’s far northwest, they are in urgent need of food, shelter, and water, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today, after launching an emergency response.
"They left on foot very early in the morning—women, children, and elderly people," said Dr. Silas Adamou Moussa, MSF deputy program manager for emergencies.
"When they fled, they had to leave elderly and sick relatives behind.
They brought along what possessions they could, but in Goura they have nothing to drink and nowhere to sleep.
The refugees have been staying in a large, informal camp in Goura since late January.
"This is not the first time that people from Rann have had to flee to Cameroon," Dr. Moussa said.
"The first time, some of them returned home after having fled, but not this time.
Their children are afraid."
Access to safe drinking water has been a major problem in the camp.
MSF and other aid providers have been working to increase the provision of drinking water to 240,000 liters per day in the camp.

(MissionNewswire) Through a “Clean Water Initiative,” Salesian Missions has provided the funding for the construction of 10 water boreholes in communities in Nigeria.
As part of the second phase of the project, the construction of boreholes has begun at Salesian centers in the towns of Koko, Abuja and three others in the Benue State.
The new water supply will help ensure that poor youth, their families and Salesian missionaries living and working in the area have access to safe, clean water for drinking and cooking and for personal hygiene.
This project also ensures access to water for Salesian youth centers that are providing services for street children.
This reduces the number of waterborne illnesses that can affect those in our schools, keeping them away from important study time.” UN-Water estimates that worldwide 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services and by 2050, the world’s population will have grown by an estimated 2 billion people pushing global water demand up to 30 percent higher than today.
Women and children often bear the primary responsibility for water collection in the majority of households and globally, spend 140 million hours a day collecting water.
According to UNICEF, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and the ninth most populous country in the world.
By UN estimates, Nigeria will be one of the countries responsible for most of the world’s total population increase by 2050.
While Nigeria has the second strongest economy in Africa, it also has extreme rates of poverty with 100 million people living on less than $1 a day.
Poverty still remains one of the most critical challenges facing the country and population growth rates have meant a steady increase in the number of people living in conditions of poverty.

Water is a natural resource of fundamental importance and an essential ingredient for human security and sustainable development, hence its significant impact on health, food security, poverty and the environment.
Despite the indispensability of this much-desired resource, and efforts made by government and individuals to make it available, an average Nigerian cannot get access to potable water because of the composition.
To ameliorate this problem of water scarcity, there is need to theoretically examine water accounting and how it can be used to alleviate the challenges of water scarcity in Nigeria.
Water accounting is the systematic study of the current status and trends in water supply, demand, accessibility and use in domains that have been specified.
Furthermore, it entails systematic acquisition, analysis and communication of information relating to stocks, flows and fluxes of water (from sources to sinks) in natural, disturbed or heavily engineered environments.
Water accounting in a practical sense is used as a basis for evidence-informed decision-making and policy development by answering questions such as: What are the underlying causes of imbalances in water supply (quantity and quality) and demand of different water users and uses?
Is the current level of consumptive water use sustainable?
The idea behind water accounting is the existence of scope worldwide to improve water-related sectoral and inter-sectoral decision-making at local, regional and national levels.
For example, government line departments, when attempting to align plans, rarely have access to a common information base.
A key output of water accounting is, therefore, a common information base that is acceptable to all the key stakeholders involved in planning or other decision-making processes.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has recently launched the Effective Water Sanitation and Hygiene Programme (E-Wash) in Nigeria.
The water and sanitation project will impact four states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In Nigeria, 57 million people lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, according to the United Nations (UN).
It has therefore launched a project called the Effective Water, Sanitation and Hygiene programme (E-Wash).
Over the next four years, the programme will help to strengthen the governance, financial and technical sustainability of the entities responsible for water and sanitation management in each state concerned.
According to the organisation, in the various countries, more than 3.1 million people have benefited from sustainable access to safe drinking water, and more than 3 million have benefited from improved access to sanitation facilities.
These results concern in particular more than 500,000 women and girls, often poorly taken into account in their specific needs.
“By strengthening the capacity of these water boards to make concrete investment decisions, improving the efficiency of billing and collection and addressing their customers’ concerns, more people and businesses will ultimately have access to water and sanitation services,” said Benson Ajisegiri, Director of Water Supply at the Ministry of Water Resources.
USAID will invest more than 60 million dollars in the project.
Jean Marie Takouleu

The United States Agency for International Development (USID) says five thousand households would benefit from its Effective Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Services (E-WASH) programme.
The E-WASH programme aims at improving water delivery services and sanitation across six states including Abia, Delta, Imo, Sokoto, Niger and Taraba.
Speaking at the launch in Abuja, USAID Nigeria Mission Director, Stephen Haykin, said the programme would focus on strengthen governance, financial and technical viability of water agencies, which will subsequently lead to an improvement in the health and hygiene of the population.
“Through the course of this activity, USAID will help the water boards demonstrate that better performance that will raise the quality of services for their customers, facilitate economic sustainability by improving finance through a reduction or better targeting of subsidies, and increase the chances of serving all customers in their area, including the marginalized,” Haykin said.
“I am confident that USAID, our new partner state governments, collaborative development partners and the business community, can share our respective expertise, capabilities and resources to develop more professional and accountable water and sanitation utilities,” he noted.
Haykin said the six beneficiary states were selected based on their willingness to reform the existing functionality of their infrastructure and their potential for positive impact.
The minister of water resources, Suleiman Hussain Adamu, who was represented by the director, water supply of the ministry, Benson Ajisegiri, lauded USAID for the programme.
“By strengthening these state Water Boards’ capacity to make solid investment decisions, improving the efficiency of their billing and collections, and responsiveness to the concerns of their customers, more people and businesses will ultimately have access to water and sanitation services,” he said.
The United Nations had said that about 57 million Nigerians lack access to safe drinking water, and each year, water-borne illnesses kill around one million Nigerian children under the age of five.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says more people have access to cell phones in Nigeria than they have access to toilets.
Quoting a 2018 report by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Chief of WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), UNICEF, Zaid Jurji, said 140 million people in Nigeria have cell phones, while only 97 million have access to improved sanitation.
Mr Jurji who spoke at a two-day media dialogue on European Union Niger Delta Water Project, in Port Harcourt on Monday, noted that the sanitation sector in Nigeria is severely under resourced, as sanitation is only 19 per cent of WASH budget.
He further added that only 39 per cent Nigerians use an improved toilet that is not shared by more than one household.
Over 46 million people still practice open defecation on Nigeria, with 32 percent living in rural areas and 12 percent in urban areas.
This figure is far from the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG) target by 2030, which aims at achieving universal access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.
In his remarks, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who was represented by the principal information officer of the ministry, Toye Falayi, urged media partners to sustain advocacy for improve water sanitation and hygiene.

“Pure water” is the household name for packaged sachet water.
Efforts to gain entrance into the main compound proved abortive but a quick survey of the entire factory revealed that the products are conveyed in an unbranded white but rickety looking ‘pick-up’ Van, while the major production factory is a sore sight.
For instance, a sachet water producing factory with brand name Tbillz Daily table water is located in a popular estate along Lifecamp, Abuja.
A visit to some factories in the state revealed how the purportedly “pure water” is packaged in shops located in secluded areas, away from prying eyes of the public.
There was a case where somebody just picked another person’s nylon, printed the same thing and was producing water.” Similarly in Niger State, from the three factories visited (Al-machus, Supreme and Kabinaf), only one of them seemed to be operating in a fairly clean environment.
On getting to the factory’s entrance, one could not have imagined that water for drinking is being packaged for sale in such place.
According to him, considering the environment where the water is being produced, there are possibilities that the source of water is not from a borehole within the environment.
“The question mark on this sample is that they may be using direct tap water because I have seen instances, where people will say, is it not treated water from the water board.
However, NAFDAC has to be particular about the environment because they are not always there to monitor.” “If it is NAFDAC that went to that site, it will be closed down irrespective of the water quality because they will always tell you that your factory should not be close to the dump site.
Like typhoid, it could be waterborne or food-borne.” NAFDAC Speaks When contacted, the National Agency for Foods and Drugs Administration Control (NAFDAC) affirmed the situation but explained that there are cases where manufacturers lower their standards after getting the required certification from the agency.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says more people have access to cell phones in Nigeria than they have access to toilets.
Quoting a 2018 report by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Chief of WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), UNICEF, Zaid Jurji, said 140 million people in Nigeria have cell phones, while only 97 million have access to improved sanitation.
Mr Jurji who spoke at a two-day media dialogue on European Union Niger Delta Water Project, in Port Harcourt on Monday, noted that the sanitation sector in Nigeria is severely under resourced, as sanitation is only 19 per cent of WASH budget.
He further added that only 39 per cent Nigerians use an improved toilet that is not shared by more than one household.
Over 46 million people still practice open defecation on Nigeria, with 32 percent living in rural areas and 12 percent in urban areas.
This figure is far from the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG) target by 2030, which aims at achieving universal access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.
In his remarks, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who was represented by the principal information officer of the ministry, Toye Falayi, urged media partners to sustain advocacy for improve water sanitation and hygiene.

Mrs Owoade’s house has a borehole.
Once it does not smell and does not have sediment, I can drink the water.” Water Vendors Unlike the Owoades and Fasadares, Emmanuela Njoku in Jikwoyi, another suburb of Abuja, said she entirely relies on water vendors.
Though the vendors say they buy their water from boreholes, one cannot be too sure.
In Nigeria, potable water supply is a familiar challenge of households.
About 2.1 billion people worldwide, according to World Bank statistics, do not have access to safe drinking water services and 4.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation.
“Annually, girls and women spend 73 billion hours fetching water.
The 2017 MICS survey stated that 68 per cent of Nigerians buy or source water from locations outside their homes.
He said if the country continues at the present rate of development in the water sector, only about 72 per cent of Nigerians will have access to potable water supply by 2030.
Mr Jurgi said access to safe water can save most of the under five children who die from preventable diseases, as most of the diseases are caused by poor access to water.
He noted that about 88 per cent of diarrhoea cases in Nigeria come from states that do not meet the WASH standard.

Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or recreational purposes.
“Ninety per cent of households in Nigeria consume contaminated water and other impure substances,” according to a report by the multiple indicator cluster.
Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in low and middle-income countries, 38 per cent of health care facilities lack an improved water source, 19 per cent do not have improved sanitation, and 35 per cent lack water and soap for hand washing.
“globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces, accounting for about 502 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and by 2025 half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas,” says WHO.
However, contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases, some of the more commonly reported problems experienced from drinking impure water includes :cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio.
This is particularly the case in health care facilities where both patients and staff are placed at additional risk of infection and disease when water, sanitation, and hygiene services are lacking,” says WHO.
Inadequate management of urban, industrial, and agricultural wastewater means the drinking-water of hundreds of millions of people is dangerously contaminated or chemically polluted.
Diarrhoea is the most widely known disease linked to contaminated food and water but there are other hazards.
The aim of the scheme is to ensure that products protect users from the pathogens that cause diarrhoeal disease and to strengthen policy, regulatory, and monitoring mechanisms at the national level to support appropriate targeting and consistent and correct use of such products.