World Water Day: Access to Clean Water Program
Publish Date
20 MAR 2020
Overview
Water is the basis of life on earth. Health is a fundamental human right. In developing countries women and children are often the most vulnerable populations with limited access to clean water. Our company helps to change this with its A2W (Access to Water) project.
World Water Day 2020 on March 22 is about water and climate change – and how the two are inextricably linked. As the global population grows, so does the demand for water, which depletes natural resources and damages the environment in many places.
Fostering access to clean water for an equitable development of countries is one of the paramount goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Also, the World Health Organization has identified the scarcity of access to water in Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) as a critical gap to be filled in in order to strengthen local ability to provide care to patients and fight spread of infection diseases.
Our mission is to develop transformative health solutions (treatments, diagnostics, technologies) to support control and elimination programs related to infectious neglected diseases such as schistosomiasis, a water-borne disease impacting severely children’s health and often leading to their premature death.
In the context of our Schistosomiasis Elimination Program, as of last year, the Global Health Institute has partnered with the Ministry of Health and the A2W (Access to Water) Foundation in Senegal to explore further technologies to control transmission factors.
Indeed, the A2W project aims at providing innovative clean-water platforms to local health centers in Senegal to improve sanitation and operate efficiently, as well as to local communities to reduce exposure of vulnerable populations to parasites.
This project applies a unique social business approach to create sustainability, involving the local population, including the women’s community, and health workers.
Infobox
Schistosomiasis is one of the most common and most devastating parasitic diseases in tropical countries. It is estimated that more than 240 million people are infected worldwide and that around 200,000 die from it each year.
Our company initiated its Schistosomiasis Elimination Program in cooperation with WHO back in 2007: we enabled the treatment of more than 400,000 school-age children in Sub-Saharan Africa with 1 billion praziquantel tablets donated.
More information about the Schistosomiasis Elimination Program is available at www.MakingSchistory.com