• Around 80 percent of diseases in the developing world are caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation.
• Millions of children suffer from parasitic worm infections, which are connected with health problems such as malnutrition and anaemia.
  

By improving water and sanitation and promoting good hygiene, we can reduce and even prevent common diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera, typhoid, skin and eye infections and infestations with worms such as guinea worm.
Ensuring access to clean water has also dramatically cut down on hours spent by women and girls in fetching water, freeing their time for school and other productive activities.

Access to clean water and sanitation, a human right spelled out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is fundamental not only to health but to human dignity.

Today 1.1 billion people still live without improved water supply and 2.4 billion without improved sanitation. Not surprisingly most of these people are the poorest in the world ? and with the poorest health. Improving not only water, but also sanitation and hygiene practices can make a major contribution towards preventing diseases, which in turn contributes to poverty alleviation.

This is why UNICEF and its partners provide support to Water, Environment and Sanitation (WES) programs, in over 75 countries in the world, many of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, to reduce the disease burden and hard labour of water fetching by women and children, in particular girls.

Since their bodies and minds have not yet fully developed, children are more sensitive and susceptible than adults to unsafe drinking, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene and therefore many of UNICEF's supported programs focus on improving the child's environment through early child development programs.

In many countries throughout the world schools have very poor sanitation environments with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hand washing facilities. UNICEF support for school sanitation and hygiene education focuses on development of life-skills, a healthy and safe school environment and outreach to families and communities.

With HIV/AIDS continuing to grow as a major threat to children and their families, safe drinking water and adequate sanitation help reduce the risks of exposure to preventable diseases. Improved access to water and sanitation facilities help families and communities caring for HIV/AIDS infected people.

(Vanessa Tobin is Chief of the Water, Environment and Sanitation Section, UNICEF.)