EDITORIAL – Accelerating safe water access

Even in the National Capital Region, there are thousands of households that still rely on communal deep wells for potable water. Outside the NCR and other urban centers nationwide, nearly 11 million families lack access to clean water, according to the National Water Resources Board. As the country joins the international community in marking World Water Day today, the NWRB board said those families still rely on unsafe sources of water including deep wells, springs, rivers, lakes and rainwater for their daily needs.

Apart from the lack of safe water, many families also lack sanitation facilities and still practice open defecation, which can contaminate water and food sources, the NWRB reported. This situation is believed to have contributed to the 53,066 deaths recorded across the country between 2010 and 2019 due to water-borne diseases such as typhoid, paratyphoid fever, bloody diarrhea, viral hepatitis and leptospirosis. Even cholera, which is supposed to have been eradicated decades ago, has persisted in the country including in Metro Manila because of the lack of access to safe water in many communities.

Regular hand washing – a basic preventive measure against diseases – is not possible for many households because of the lack of clean water and sanitation facilities. The problem became starker during the COVID-19 pandemic, when such households could not practice proper hand hygiene to ward off infection.

In the NCR, the country’s most populous region needs to develop new sources of fresh water amid ever increasing demand. The problem has been felt in the past years with periodic water service interruptions across Metro Manila and neighboring areas. Many communities are forced to continue relying on deep wells – a practice that geologists have warned is causing ground weakening.

Globally, the United Nations reports that the world is “seriously off-track” in attaining its Sustainable Development Goal set in 2015 of providing safely managed water and sanitation for everyone by 2030. To get back on track, the UN is urging governments to work “on average four times faster” to meet this SDG goal on time.

With this year’s World Water Day theme of accelerating change, the UN is emphasizing that the water and sanitation crisis is undermining progress on major global issues, “from health to hunger, gender equality to jobs, education to industry, and disasters to peace.” The Philippines needs greater resolve and resources to address this crisis.