News - Clean water in Mozambique
Source: British Red Cross Society - UK
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The British Red
Cross is contributing more than £100,000 to provide clean water and sanitation to some of the poorest communities in Mozambique.The southern African country suffered many years of
conflict before a peace accord in the mid-1990s. Since then many rural communities, who were displaced by the war, have been re-establishing small farms but the infrastructure remains poor with little
access to safe drinking water.The first phase of the project aims to provide safe water supplies to 39 rural communities in Nampula province, along with training to improve hygiene and
sanitation.We used to spend at least two hours or more each day collecting dirty water from a river some distance from the villageRibaue villagerThe Mozambique Red Cross is
leading the project, with technical and financial support from the British Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Norwegian Red Cross and in close cooperation
with the government.The first new Red Cross water point was officially opened in November in Ribaue district marking the start of the year-long programme in Mozambique. The water point will
serve more than 800 people in Ribaue, where just a fifth of people had access to safe water.A Ribaue villager described the impact on her life: "We used to spend at least two hours or more
each day collecting dirty water from a river some distance from the village – which would also dry up at some times during the year, causing us to walk even further. Now we can take water from a
hand pump in the centre of the village and you can see the water is always available and clean."VitalDi Moody, from the British Red Cross, said water and sanitation is vital to
improving the health of the population."While Mozambique's economy and general health has improved, this has mainly been in the urban areas," she said. "The rural poor, especially in the more
inaccessible areas such as the remote Nampula province, have a long way to go to reduce the high incidence of water and sanitation-related diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea." The project
is part of the Federation's ten year Global Water and Sanitation Initiative launched in 2005 to contribute to the UN Millennium Development Goals to "reduce by half, those without sustainable access
to safe water and sanitation by 2015".
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