Page 45 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.78, # 2, 2021, pp. 43-62

As noted in UNICEF (2008) one of the principal millennium development goal
(MDGs) states that by 2015, half the people without sustainable access to safe
drinking water and basic sanitation should be satisfied. However, until date this
objective is still far to be a reality in Cameroon. The quality of water is a major
health input, thus achieving this MDG will have a significant impact on achieving
many of the other MDGs such as poverty and hunger, universal primary education,
gender and equality, reduced child mortality, combating diseases (HIV, malaria) and
global partnership. The household water supply is very important for human
existence in five reasons: (1) water is vital for health, (2) water leads to social
development, (3) water is a good economic investment, (4) water helps the
environment and (5) water is achievable.

The United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (2008) revealed that where adequate
sanitation is provided coupled with protected water and improved hygiene
behaviours one can expect the following improvement: (1) lower morbidity rates in
the population, (2) lower mortality rates due to diarrhea, (3) better nutrition among
children, (4) cleaner environment, (5) safer food and increased impact of improved
water supplies, (6) better learning and retention among school children, (7) more
dignity and privacy for everybody especially women and girls and increased
awareness of the importance of sanitation and hygiene and the need to develop a
more permanent strategy. Hence, water and hygiene are keys to child survival,
development and growth, though improved water supply has yet to reach 2.6 billion
people in the developing world, almost 980 million of which are children under 18
years old, this means that millions of children are dying each year from preventable
diseases (UNICEF, 2008). In rural Cameroon, the stakes are still high, thousands of
children are hospitalized each month and many are dying because of water borne
diseases and the environmental sanitation.

Thus, the world health organization reported that almost one tenth of the global
disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply and management of
water resources while in another report they noted that 4 percent of all deaths and
5.7 percent of total disability-adjusted life years can be attributed to water (Prudd-
Ustun, 2008). Cheng et al (2012) added that, world wide 1.4 million children die
each year from preventable diarrhea diseases and some 88 percent of diarrhea cases
are related to unsafe water. Further, water has been described as the most effective
public health intervention the international community has at its disposal to reduce
child mortality. Hence, because of the great potential to improve child health
through targeted interventions in the environment in a context where countries have
limited resources to invest in better water, making it important to provide an
evidence-based estimate on the benefit of this factor (Bampoky, 2013).
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