Access
According to data from the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF, which are in turn based on data from various national surveys including the 2005 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), access to an improved water source and improved sanitation was estimated as follows in 2008:
- 38% for improved water supply (98% for urban areas and 26% for rural areas)
- 12% for improved sanitation (29% in urban areas, 8% in rural areas)
According to figures used by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development for planning purposes, however, access was much higher. In 2010, access to drinking water was estimated at 68.5%: 91.5% in urban areas (within 0.5 km) and 65.8% in rural areas (within 1.5 km). The higher figure for rural areas may be because the distance to an improved water source used in this definition is higher than the distance used by the Demographic and Health Survey.
In 1990 access to improved water supply had been estimated at only 17%, and access to improved sanitation had been estimated at only 4%. There thus has been a significant increase in access for water supply and sanitation, which spans both urban and rural areas. More than 138,000 improved community water points were constructed and rehabilitated from 2008 to 2010.
In communities that lack access to an improved water source, women bear the brunt of the burden of collecting water. For example, according to an article by Tina Rosenberg for National Geographic, in the mountain-top village Foro in the Konso special woreda of southwestern Ethiopia women make three to five round trips per day to fetch dirty water from the Koiro river. Each roundtrip lasts two to three hours and water is carried in "50-pound jerrycans".
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In Ethiopia
Famous quotes containing the word access:
“Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)