Dirty water is the major cause of Ugandan children's illness and death

Watuwa Timbiti in AllAfrica.com via New Vision (Uganda): At a communal water spring in Kinawataka, a low-end squalid suburb of Kampala, children with all sorts of repulsively dirty containers are not only collecting water, but equally littering the water point with rubbish.

Visibly, the stagnant water down the collection point is such a distasteful sight. At a short distance away, some ladies are drawn in washing clothes, some of which contain child excreta, used water runs off to the water point, thus contaminating it.

Such gross hygiene abuse is not limited to the Kinawataka spring, it is a replica of what happens at most community springs or water sources such as taps, in other poorly planned and densely populated areas of Kampala and Uganda as a whole. Many areas in the country have no access to safe water and improved sanitation.

Consequently, lack of access to safe water and absence of sanitation integrity due to contamination of most water sources has over time spurred repercussions, both of an economic and health nature, especially water-related diseases such as diarrhoea.

According to the minister of state for primary health care, as cited by the New Vision of February 25, over 400 people die daily of various infections, including diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, ebola and marburg fever....

A girl at a well in Uganda, outside Kampala, shot by Barefootvet, public domain