Access to Clean Water is Critical to Combat Pandemic

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Access to Clean Water is Critical to Combat Pandemic

Thursday, April 9, 2020

For over 25 years, we at Bread and Water for Africa®  are keenly aware of the need for clean water for children and families in sub-Saharan Africa where entire communities risk serious illness, and even death, drinking water from contaminated sources.

That’s why since 1995 we have been digging wells and running pipelines in places like Abomvomba, Cameroon, Bo, in Sierra Leone, Kericho, Kenya,

Kaweza Community, Zambia, Manica province, Mozambique, and most recently Shinebeles, Ethiopia. We are also in the midst of a multi-year campaign to protect natural springs in Uganda from human and animal contamination.

Now with deadly coronavirus beginning to spread through the continent, thanks to supporters of Bread and Water for Africa® tens of thousands of Africans in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe have all the clean water they need to wash their hands frequently.

In Bo, where our partner in the country, Rev. Francis Mambu, executive director of Faith Healing Development Organization, informed us in 2014 that the community lacked safe drinking water and most residents were getting their water from ponds and unprotected well we took action.

We constructed the well on the grounds of a clinic operated by FHDO to not only to have a safe water source for the patients and medical staff, but also the greater community of 8,000 who where educated on the importance of clean water and protection of their source of water.

Whenever we have dug a well, we always choose a site such as a school, clinic, or community center where all residents have access to all the water they need for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing their hands.

In Uganda, Bega kwa Bega, or newest partner has been protecting springs with a concrete barrier at a cost of about $1,000 and our goal of completing 125 projects over the course of the next five years.

Each protected site will benefit 50 families representing and estimated 250 people with all the safe, the water they will need for some 20 years.

Water is life, and especially now in these times of a global pandemic, is critical to the health and wellbeing of those who have no choice but to drink unsafe water from unprotected streams and unable to wash their hands with clean water.

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