“Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and therefore, a basic human right. Contaminated water jeopardizes both the physical and social health of all people. It is an affront to human dignity.”
United Nations Development Programme.

Water was asserted as a Human Right by the United Nations in 2002 in their General Comment No.15. This clarified the obligation for governments to extend access to sufficient, affordable, accessible and safe water supplies and to safe sanitation services as their resources allow.

More than a billion people in the world today lack access to clean drinking water. The result is that there are more people in the world’s hospitals today suffering from water-borne diseases than any other ailment.

Two million children die every year - 6000 a day - from such infections. Most of them are under the age of five.

In September 2000, at the UN millennium summit, world leaders committed themselves to a set of eight time-bound measurable Millennium Development Goals; goal seven is about ensuring environmental sustainability. One of the targets is to halve by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

This objective will require greater support from developed nations, new policies and new technologies in the developing world.

CLEAN WATER 

Drinking clean water ensures that you stay hydrated. But not everyone has access to water as clean as FRANK. In many under-served communities around the world, the only available water is unsafe to drink. Below are a few shocking facts you should be aware of:

• The World Health Organisation recognises over 20 diseases caused by drinking unsafe water. These include cholera, diarrhoea, hepatitis, typhoid and ringworm. For more information click here.
• In the past 10 years, diarrhoea has killed more children than all those lost to armed conflict in almost 60 years since the Second World War.
• The death toll from diarrhoea among children far exceeds that of HIV/AIDS among children – WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme on Water Supply and Sanitation, Assessment 2000 Report.
• Often young children are responsible for the collection of water. The size of the water container usually holds about 15 litres of water, weighing 15kg and may need to be carried up to three or four miles. Carrying such heavy weights can have severe health implications and it can also be so time consuming that the children are often not able to attend school, they also have little time to play. A centrally located clean water facility can alleviate this problem.
• Local economies and household budgets are drained of valuable finance by the need to purchase expensive medicines in order to combat the effects of consuming contaminated water. This can be dramatically reduced with the introduction and education provided with a clean water facility.
• Our partners Naandi have calculated, that on average, it takes 4 hours of hard graft to earn enough money to buy sufficient fuel in order to boil 15 litres of contaminated water enough so that it is suitably clean to consume, even this does not kill all the disease causing pathogens!

FRANK SUPPORT NEW SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES AND POLICIES

At the FRANK Water Projects facilities disease pathogens are removed from contaminated water using a combination of sand filters, carbon filters, 5 and 1 micron filters and UV filter technology. Water is cleaned at a centrally located facility where villagers collect it (deliveries are also provided by the community at many of the projects). Safe storage of the cleaned water is also important and involves the use of plastic containers with a narrow mouth, lid and a stopper to prevent recontamination. Education, empowerment and communication campaigns accompany the introduction of the clean water processes to help ensure the involvement of the whole community and the maintenance of the clean water supplies.