World Water Day 2013: Making cooperation and integration key priorities for development policy – Tearfund's Policy Blog

March 25, 2013 by stephaniekgill

Friday was a busy day in the world of water, sanitation and hygiene as we marked World Water Day. At Tearfund we’ve been working on these issues for many years, and our latest reports highlight the important of WASH for both child health, specifically in tackling diarrhoea, and also for wider impacts of improving peace and stability in a local area. Continuing to raise awareness and today, we are pleased to have the support of Lord Avebury with this guest blog below. You might also be interested in blogs from Baroness Kinnock and MP Jim Dobbin last week on the importance of WASH for child survival

By Lord Avebury

Friday was World Water Day and an opportunity to celebrate the excellent work being done to promote water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the developing world. The UK has played a leading role in making WASH a priority for international development funding and the Government’s commitment to doubling the number of people reached by WASH by 2015 sets an ambitious target for us, and other developed nations, to follow.

While much progress is undoubtedly being made, great inequality of access still remains with too many communities reliant on unclean water and inadequate sanitation facilities, whilst simultaneously employing poor hygiene practices. One of the biggest concerns about this inequality is the prevalence of diarrhoeal disease. This is of particular concern in Africa and Asia, where eighty percent of diarrhoea related child deaths occur. Staggeringly, around 80 children die every hour from diarrhoeal disease, making it the second largest killer of children under five worldwide, after pneumonia, and the most common cause of childhood illness. It is worth reflecting that in Britain we consider the condition little more than inconvenient.

Effective methods to both prevent and treat diarrhoeal disease exist and are being rolled out across the developing world. Improving access to WASH is a vital stage in this process. However we must also utilise all available tools to prevent and treat the condition, including vaccines, antibiotics, oral rehydration therapy (ORT), exclusive breastfeeding and zinc and other micronutrients. UNICEF estimates that combining all of these into one single package of care would cut deaths due to diarrhoea by around 60 percent.

This strategy of integrating care is gaining significant momentum in the development community, particularly in light of constrained public finances. In the vaccines sector, we are already seeing the benefits of integration in vaccine effectiveness and delivery. Vaccines are far less effective in environments where WASH access is poor and infrastructure development is becoming a key part of vaccine roll-out. Without adequate cold chain storage facilities and serviceable roads, it is extremely difficult to ensure that effective vaccines against a number of preventable diseases reach children in rural areas.

As Co-chair of the All Party Group for Child Health and Vaccine Preventable Diseases, I have met with a number of the leading organisations in the WASH sector to establish how integrated packages of care can work on the ground. The theme for this year’s World Water Day, with events throughout the year, is Water Cooperation and today we are supporting our partners at WaterAid, Tearfund and PATH in calling on the Government to make cooperation and integration key priorities for future development policy. By working together and joining up our efforts, we can significantly reduce diarrhoeal disease, and other preventable conditions, and make substantial progress on attaining our Millennium Development Goal targets for improving child and maternal health.