* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
If education is the key to helping children escape a future of poverty, WASH is key to helping children safely maximize their education
When we think of what young people need to get a quality education, we consider the obvious: books, stationary, teachers, and a safe space. Farthest from our minds are water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH. It remains a grievous fact that when people are deprived of their rights to safe water and sanitation, it’s usually the most vulnerable who suffer.
As a WASH specialist, I’ve seen the benefits to communities when systems that provide safe water are built in both humanitarian and development contexts.
In Yemen, for example -- a country brought to its knees as a result of war and disease -- millions of children live in the shadows of a cholera outbreak fueled by the absence of a strong health system. At the latest count, more than 2,300 people died in just over a year -- each death preventable.
Children spend on average 40 percent of their day at school. They go to learn and develop skills, but the lack of WASH services at school affects learning and prevents children from realising their full potential.
A recent global assessment of WASH in schools, the first of its kind, shows that 600 million children worldwide did not have basic drinking water in their schools in 2016. 1 in 4 primary school students and 1 in 6 secondary school students have no drinking water service. Under these conditions, during a seven-to-eight hour school day, the average child -- boisterous and energetic -- would most likely experience side effects of dehydration: headaches, dizzy spells and difficulty concentrating.
Half the world's schools lack clean water, toilets and handwashing
The problem does not end there. In 23 percent of schools globally, there are no sanitation services, so some students may defecate in the open -- a cause of preventable disease. And girls may miss school when there are no toilets to manage their periods. Only two-thirds of schools have toilets or facilities where human waste is hygienically separated from human contact in Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.
We now know that, 900 million children worldwide lack basic hygiene services in school -- simple water and soap. This means a bad situation is worsened when children cannot wash their hands.
So, this is the harsh reality of school for millions of children: dehydration, open defecation and the exposure to diseases like diarrhea. School becomes an unhealthy place to be when students lack access to seemingly basic things like safe drinking water, toilets and soap and water to wash their hands after defecating and before eating.
But, we know how to fix this, even in the most dire circumstances. In Yemen, as part of the humanitarian response to the cholera outbreak, WASH programmes were mobilised for more than 1.5 million students in almost 3,770 schools. Through these programmes, children who dare to go to school, despite being on the doorstep of attacks due to the ongoing conflict, were given hygiene kits with soap bars and taught healthy hygiene practices.
If education is the key to helping children escape a future of poverty, WASH is key to helping children safely maximize their education. With access to these services in schools comes the knowledge of its importance to their health and wellbeing, and over time, whole communities may adopt hygiene practices that could help prevent disease.
That is why basic WASH services in all schools by 2030 is a key Sustainable Development Goal target, but, unfortunately, the world is far from achieving this.
So our task in the coming years is clear. We must prioritise the funding, installation and maintenance of basic WASH services in all schools and inform children of the benefits of using them. Doing so helps protect and promote the health, as well as the future of our children, our families and our communities.
Kelly Ann Naylor, global chief of WASH, UNICEF, New York.
