Health and Sanitation in Africa

Health and Sanitation in the Eastern African Countries

Quianna Hunt

Strayer University

Health and Sanitation in the Eastern African Countries

Africa is facing many health challenges which impacts human development, economic development, and poverty reduction efforts. These issues are due to the relationship of unsanitary conditions and disease causation. The African countries population is growing rapidly and enduring health hazards such as poor sanitation, unsafe water, insufficient hygiene, maternal health complications, and several diseases including: Malaria, Aids/HIV, Tuberculosis, Cholera, and Measles. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services along with poor hygiene practices kills and endangers thousands of adults and children every day. This leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more. Children, mainly girls, are denied rights to education due to the lack of sanitation facilities in the schools. (World Health Org., 2009) Clean water is an important need for human development. Fifteen percent of the population has access to clean water. Water supply takes place in several ways: by drawing water from ponds, streams and rivers; less traditionally from wells; and in a more modern form from boreholes as well as from pipe systems (i.e., water corporations pump river water, treat it and distribute it via pipes to the consumers as potable water). These methods of water supply are often differentiated by the social status of the inhabitants, and especially by the degree of urbanization.

Waste water is predominantly returned into the hydrological cycle by the population in any way and at any place. (Schalla, 1999) Water is a requirement for drinking, washing and cleaning, irrigation for crops and the generation for hydroelectric power (HEP). The combination of inadequate water supply and no sanitation is a guaranteed recipe for the rapid spread of water-borne illnesses. Cholera infections are spread by...