Consciousness Shift

Clean/safe water and adequate sanitation are two critical factors ensuring human health and protection against a wide range of disease across Africa.   As the Women International Coalition Organisation (WICO) Africa celebrates the International Year of Sanitation, 2008 and the International Decade for Action: Water for Life, 2005-2015, we call upon the international community to work in collaboration with WICO Africa to strengthen efforts to increase the access to water and sanitation for all by 2015 in order to combat disease, improve the health and well-being of the African population.

The paper presents the following challenges; lack of clean/safe water and adequate sanitation is Africa's ingle largest cause of illness, lack of safe water and poor management of human wastes can spread diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, polio, trachoma, tapeworms etc and other water associated diseases such as malaria, unsafe water and lack of sanitation are major factors underlying many million child death every year.

Most of these deaths are preventable. Today 300 million people in Africa lack clean/safe water and 313 million lack adequate sanitation. It is estimated that almost half of the deaths from diarrhoea each year could be prevented through an understanding of basic hygiene.

Understanding and contributing to the changing nature and shifting boundaries of contemporary community/environmental and public health issues both at national and continental levels requires a multidisciplinary action.

This paper argues the need to draw on a range of social and scientific theories to champion the social, cultural, economic and environmental determinants of water and sanitation issues in Africa. The necessity to advocate and facilitate across sectors, to network, collaborate and participate, requires people who work not only within sectors and disciplines but across then, who engage with issues of social and environmental justice, grassroots activism and participation; and who can work within a range of agencies, institutions, scientific and social movements.

This paper will focus on the recommendations for actions such as;

Effective and sustained advocacy on water, sanitation and hygiene at all levels, water, sanitation and hygiene education programmes in schools and communities, investment in infrastructure such as latrines and toilets in schools and communities, focus on long-term, sustainable service delivery in addition to the construction of facilities, involve women fully in the planning and design of water and sanitation facilities and look at water and sanitation issues from a gender perspective, involve communities to ensure long-term solution and  prioritize water and sanitation in disaster-response planning to enable the continent of Africa use the International Year of Sanitation and the "Water for Life" Decade as an opportunity to increase efforts to provide clean/safe water and adequate sanitation for all by 2015 and ensure a health living environment across the continent of Africa.