Although many of us know that water is a scarce resource in our world, few people know that more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to lack of access to clean and safe drinking water.
That’s nearly 2 million children each year. On World Water Day, we need to remember these children and their families. Although I have worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, I didn’t know the depth of the crisis of poor sanitation and dangerous water. I was shocked at these statistics when I came to the US Coalition for Child Survival in 2006.
In 2005, I paid a visit to the Children’s Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan has one of the worst infant, child and maternal mortality statistics in the developing world. Although improvements have been made in the last few years, there continues to be a crisis there. When I visited Children’s Hospital of Kabul, I found that each day nearly 1,000 children come to the clinic seeking help. The hospital, at that time, didn’t have clean water or working sanitation. Babies were sharing incubators and the food was horrible. Many children showed up due to malnutrition, dehydration and illnesses related to unsafe drinking water.
With the upcoming opening of a new session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, a coalition of more than a million young people from around the world are preparing to ask their leaders to take a stand on global health issues. As a United Nations intern who represents and reaches out to youth, I see this as an important chance to let young voices be heard.
