Are you hungry? I am. I've been on a diet prescribed by my doctor which has consisted of no gluten, dairy, soy, or eggs for the past two weeks, and I like to complain about it. I can't wait until I can have pizza again (as I smell another student's slice of pizza wafting across the library..), or ice cream with my friends, or macaroni and cheese.
There are millions of children around the world who don't even have the choice.
Malnutrition and undernutrition are preventable conditions and are implicated in 50 percent of child deaths throughout the world. That's nearly 4.5 million children each year! When people, especially children, don't get enough calories or nutrients, their health deteriorates, their ability to resist infectison decreases, and children can experience developmental delays that will affect the rest of their lives, should they survive their first 5 years.
Lack of WASH exacerbates this problem. WASH is directly related to nutrition through diarrheal disease. When children are lucky enough to receive adequate nutrition, yet have unsafe water or unimproved sanitation, diarrhea will make them poop out the nutrients before they are absorbed. Even the best nutrition interventions can't prevent that.
We lose millions of children to diarrhea each year, in addition to the 2.6 million children who die from undernutrition. This isn't counting the millions of children who live, but with the effects of these diseases affecting their abilities in school and their development. These conditions together create a vicious cycle: diarrhea causes undernutrition, reducing a child's resistance to subsequent infections, including diarrhea. WASH alone can prevent long-term morbidity and 860,000 child deaths from malnutrition each year, through the reduction of diarrheal disease.
It is continually evident that including WASH in all development efforts can significantly increase the efficacy of programs. WASH changes everything.
