Water Ways: Official Youth for Global Health & Social Justice Magazine by y4ghmagazine

Y O U T H

F O R

G L O B A L

H E A L T H

S O C I A L

J U S T I C E

WATER WAYS W O R K

A R O U N D

T H E

W O R L D

F O R

W A T E R

BUILDING WELLS CHANGING FUTURES

PARTNERSHIPS FOR FRESH WATER IN SEVEN COUNTRIES .

WATERBORNE DISEASE

WOMEN

OUTBREAKS IN THE U.S.

STILL

CARRY MOST OF

U.S. TO PROBE TREATMENT

THE

OF HAITIAN MIGRANTS

AT THE BORDER

WORLDS WATER WOMEN WHO RAISE THEIR VOICES ABOUT WATER CONCERNS NEED TO BE HEARD .

V O L U M E

I S S U E

O C T O B E R

2 0 2 1

Editor's Notes

Women Carry Water

Waterborne Disease

Haitian Migrants

2022 Youth Summit

Climate Change Poem

Waste Water and COVID-19

Building Water Wells

STNETNOC FO ELBAT

editor's note It is an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the first publication of Water Ways! Water Ways is the official magazine of Youth for Global Health & Social Justice (Y4GH). Water Ways is a publication for water advocates focusing on a future generation for change. We are inspired by the voices of water advocates, more specifically, of the multitude of youth voices from around the world. Write poetry? Water Ways is for you! Have a hot take on a current water issue? Water Ways! Interesting faith journey? Water Ways! Whatever it may be, we hope you find your creative (or serious) niche with us. We are grounded in sharing the views, perspectives, and stories of our global community. Our mission is to bring the Y4GH community thoughtful and engaging commentary on political and social issues relating to water, while also displaying the organization's creative side through the arts, literary and otherwise. Anyone is welcome to submit their work for publication on our website. Our magazine will feature all three sections that are the core of Y4GH (waterborne disease, water infrastructure, and advocacy-social justice) and hope to allow submissions in other languages as well. As a publication, we do not advocate for any specific political ideology, but we have set standards regarding the posting of harmful and denigrating pieces as it relates to minority groups. It is our responsibility to highlight the diversity of our global community and to use our platform as a space of learning. The freedom of speech, however, does not mean the freedom of hate speech. We would like to be as transparent as possible. For this reason, we gladly welcome any comments and critiques you may have as a reader. Letters to the editor are also highly encouraged and will be considered for publication on our website or in print. I am elated to be furthering the mission of Y4GH and to hear your stories, comments, and patronage.

Dr. Sheryl A. Simmons EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Advertise WITH US

Please contact us regarding rates and special advertisement packages. Water Ways accepts print ready ads via email no later than the 15th day of each month preceding the next publication. Email to: K.Worthy@y4gh.net Subject Line: Advertisement

WATERBORNE

DISEASE IN THE UNITED STATES

The United States has one of the safest drinking water supplies in the world. Yet, the water we use for drinking, swimming, and even cooling high-rise buildings can be safer. About 7.2 million Americans get sick every year from diseases spread through water. CDC’s first estimates of the impact of waterborne disease in the United States cover illnesses tied to all types of water use. They detail how many waterborne diseases, emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths occur every year, and what these cost our healthcare system. This type of information is referred to as the burden of waterborne disease.

While the United States has made tremendous strides in preventing waterborne disease over the last century, these new estimates provide a better understanding of the waterborne disease challenges we face in the 21st century. CDC, policymakers, related industries (for example, owners of large buildings and recreational water facilities), the public health community, and others can use this information to prioritize next steps in protecting the public from waterborne disease.

Above Microscopic organisms can lead to a myriad of dangerous or deadly diseases in pools, lakes, rivers, streams, and the ocean.

source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases (DFWED) text

Youth for Global Health & Social Justice 4th Youth Water Summit July 6-20, 2022 Accra, Ghana

2022 Youth Summit

Engaging Minds, Empowering Success Water is at the heart of today’s global challenges, including rapid population growth and mass migration, the effects of the financial crisis on infrastructure investment and the impacts of climate change and variability on development. The Youth for Global Health & Social Justice Youth Summit is a key factor in our collective response--as a global water community--to addressing these challenges and finding solutions that work for the benefit of all. This Summit will engage college and high school students from nine countries and represents a compilation of the collective action leading up to and during the 4th Y4GH Water Summit in Accra, Ghana, 6-20 July 2022. It will provide a benchmark for continued progress. Students attending the Summit are required to complete a Y4GH 10 month course of study which includes the biology of water, water infrastructure and water advocacy. A detailed description of the required education component can be found on our website at www.youthforglobalhealth.com

Dakar, Senegal

Needed in the Global South: Wastewater Collection for COVID-19 Detection Manzoor Qadir HAMILTON, Canada, Aug 26 2021 (IPS) - Understanding the scale and intensity of the COVID-19 virus and its emerging variants, predicting the pandemic’s direction, and developing and refining associated management response options are challenges likely to confront public-health officials and national governments worldwide well into the future. Diagnostic testing capacity for COVID-19 varies widely from country to country and often is insufficient. Hospital admissions can lag infections by weeks and asymptomatic or mild cases go unreported. One diagnostic option drawing growing attention and application: Detecting COVID-19 in community and urban wastewater. Monitoring wastewater for COVID-19 offers near real-time insights into the scale of the virus’ presence among a vast number of people, and can reveal the community’s transmission trajectory – rising or falling. Sewers offer an early warning system for COVID-19 outbreaks. Wastewater with higher concentrations of the virus corresponds to higher numbers of infected people. Compared to systematic testing of individuals, wastewater analysis is not only less invasive and simpler, it requires fewer resources, equipment, and skilled professionals. Detecting viruses in a community this way has been practiced since the early 1990s when extensive wastewater surveillance supported efforts to eradicate polio. Such experience over the years has proven that monitoring wastewater for pathogen traces is a reliable and effective disease surveillance technique. Armies of researchers with enhanced pandemic funding worldwide have been pursuing wastewater monitoring since the WHO’s initial COVID-19 alarms last year. A Google search of “COVID and wastewater” shows over 53 million results, and Google Scholar reveals around 20,000 publications on the subject, one-third of them produced since the beginning of 2021. One expert paper this year proposed an archived time series of urban sewage samples as a record of pandemics and other features of the evolving Anthropocene — an invaluable resource for future anthropologists. Most success stories about COVID-19 surveillance in wastewater and sewage sludge have come from developed countries. In the developing world, however, the picture is very different. Unfortunately, about 90% of wastewater generated in low-income developing countries is not even collected; it is released to the environment untreated. In lower-middle-income countries, about 57% of wastewater is uncollected. Monitoring wastewater for COVID-19 enables timely preventive and coping measures, which would help developing nations immensely. The “dirty secret” in many such countries, however, is that wastewater goes untreated into the environment — often entering freshwater bodies through hidden or visible pipes, for example, or contaminating groundwater.

Wastewater monitoring, collection, treatment, and safe reuse or disposal is essential for protecting human health and the absence of such practices leads to massive water pollution. Sadly, it also creates a missed opportunity for near-real-time disease surveillance, depriving about half of the global population of the benefits of timely response to outbreaks of COVID-19, with similar virus-induced diseases and pandemics foreseen. The international disparity in these pathogen early warning systems is a wakeup call for the world at large, which aims at halving the volumes of untreated wastewater by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal SDG, 6.3.1 of the 2030 Global Sustainability Agenda). Six years into the SDG era, the assessment of wastewater treatment status at the national level reveals a gloomy scenario in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, which are far from achieving the wastewater treatment and safe reuse target agreed to in 2015. With more frequent pandemic-like situations expected in years to come, a radical rethinking is widely needed, and efficient wastewater management and monitoring must be established in developing countries to protect our environment and countless lives. Establishing wastewater collection and conveyance networks, and constructing wastewater treatment plants equipped with near-real-time diagnostic systems for diseases like COVID-19 are key to improving human health in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Other tactics include implementing effluent standards and offering incentives for households and industrial sectors. Beyond expanding these disease early warning systems globally, effective wastewater collection and management in developing countries would yield important resources to offset costs. Wastewater is a source of valuable water, nutrients, precious metals, and energy. It would also support food production, livelihoods, ecosystems, climate change adaption and mitigation, and sustainable development. From every viewpoint, the investment required to properly manage wastewater globally pales by comparison to the multidimensional benefits available.

Manzoor Qadir is Assistant Director of the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary this year.

YOUTH FOR GLOBAL HEALTH & SOCIAL JUSTICE

WORK AROUND THE WORLD FOR WATER

Y4GH prepares to build water wells in six countries Stakeholders

Help & Hope Foundation Republic of Zimbabwe

Global Torch for Development Republic of Cameroon

S.E.E. H.O.P.E. Foundation Sierra Leone

A Boy and His Dream Foundation Federal Republic of Nigeria

Rebuilding Haiti One Visit at a Time Haiti

Akoma Educational Charity Foundation Republic of Ghana

A drop of water is worth more than gold to a thirsty man

YOUTH BUILDING WELLS FOR A FUTURE OF WATER Youth play an important role in becoming informed makers.

citizens Engaging

and them

future in

decision

educational

opportunities about water, science, and technology now will help to create a future generation

water

stewards

and

innovators. Youth for Global Health & Social Justice (Y4GH)

recognized

partner

organization of the United Nations and its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member

Y4GH has a primary focus on Sustainable

States in 2015.

At its heart are the 17

Development Goal #6, clean water and

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),

sanitation as a human right for all. This

which are an urgent call for action by all

program of study is divided into three areas:

countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that

Clinical

ending poverty and other deprivations must

prevention of waterborne disease.

Engineering – study of water treatment

hand-in-hand

improve

health

with and

strategies

education,

that

reduce

–

cause,

treatment

and

and water delivery systems.

inequality, and spur economic growth – all

Advocacy – raising awareness around

while tackling climate change and working

the global water crisis.

to preserve our oceans and forests.

Students successfully completing the 10 month course of study, which includes a three-month internship, will participate in the building of a project that supports clean water

and

sanitation

their

local

community. For

registration,

detailed visit

information Y4GH

www.youthforglobalhealth.com

and

website:

Women Still Carry Most of the World’s Water Water is something one should never take for granted. By Bethany Caruso Postdoctoral (FIRST) Fellow, Department of Environmental Health, Emory University Imagine going through your day without access to clean, safe water in your home for drinking, cooking, washing, or bathing whenever you need it. According to a new report from UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 2.1 billion people around the world face that challenge every day. And the task of providing water for households falls disproportionately to women and girls, especially in rural areas. Water, a human right, is critical for human survival and development. A sufficient supply of biologically and chemically safe water is necessary for drinking and personal hygiene to prevent diarrheal diseases, trachoma, intestinal worm infections, stunted growth among children, and numerous other deleterious outcomes from chemical contaminants like arsenic and lead. I have carried out research in India, Bolivia, and Kenya on the water and sanitation challenges that women and girls confront and how these experiences influence their lives. In my field work I have seen adolescent girls, pregnant women, and mothers with small children carrying water. Through interviews, I have learned of the hardships they face when carrying out this obligatory task. An insufficient supply of safe and accessible water poses extra risks and challenges for women and girls. Without recognizing the uneven burden of water work that women bear, well-intentioned programs to bring water to places in need will continue to fail to meet their goals.

Lost hours Collecting water takes time. Simply to get water for drinking, bathing, cooking, and other household needs, millions of women and girls spend hours every day traveling to water sources, waiting in line, and carrying heavy loads– often several times a day. The new UNICEF/WHO report states that 263 million people worldwide have access to water sources that are considered safe, but need to spend at least 30 minutes walking or queuing to collect their water. Another 159 million get their water from surface sources that are considered to be the most unsafe, such as rivers, streams, and ponds. Water from these sources is even more likely to require over 30 minutes to collect. In a study of 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF estimated that women there spent 16 million hours collecting water each day. Women in a recent study in Kenya reported spending an average of 4.5 hours fetching water per week, causing 77 % to worry about their safety while fetching, and preventing 24 % from caring for their children. When children or other family members get sick from consuming poor-quality water, which can happen even if the water is initially clean when collected, women spend their time providing care. These responsibilities represent lost opportunities for women’s employment, education, leisure, or sleep. Heavy loads Water is heavy. The WHO recommends 20-50 liters of water per person per day for drinking, cooking, and washing. That amounts to hauling between 44 and 110 pounds of water daily for use by each household member. And in many places, water sources are far from homes. In Asia and Africa, women walk an average of 3.7 miles per day collecting water. Carrying such loads over long distances can result in strained backs, shoulders, and necks, and other injuries if women have to walk over uneven and steep terrain or on busy roads.

Photo: gnomeandi

The burden is even heavier for women who are pregnant or are also carrying small children. Moreover, pregnant women worry that transporting these heavy loads will lead to early labor or even miscarriage. Even when a household or village has access to a safe water source close to home, residents may not use it if they believe the water is inferior in some way. As one woman told my research team in India: Tube well water quality is not good…water is saline. Cooking is not good due to this water. Not good for drinking either. People are getting water from that neighboring village…for cooking we get water from the river. Fetching water can also be very dangerous for women and girls. They can face conflict at water points and the risk of physical or sexual assault. Many of these dangers also arise when women do not have access to safe, clean, and private toilets or latrines for urinating, defecating, and managing menstruation. Global demand for water is increasing. The United Nations forecasts that if current water use patterns do not change, world demand will exceed supply by 40 % by 2030. In such a scenario, it is hard to imagine that women’s and girls’ experiences will improve without intentional efforts.

A focus on women’s needs When communities initiate programs to improve access to water, it is critical to ask women about their needs and experiences. Although women and girls play key roles in obtaining and managing water globally, they are rarely offered roles in water improvement programs or on local water committees. They need to be included as a right and as a practical matter. Numerous water projects in developing countries have failed because they did not include women. And women should play meaningful roles. A study in northern Kenya found that although women served on local water management committees, conflict with men at water points persisted because the women often were not invited to meetings or were not allowed to speak. Women who raise their voices about water concerns need to be heard. In Flint, Michigan, women were critical to revealing the city’s water crisis and continue to push for changes. We also need broader strategies to reduce gender disparities in water access. First we need to collect more data on women’s water burden and how it affects their their health, well-being, and personal development. Second, women must be involved in creating and managing targeted programs to mitigate these risks. Third, these programs should be evaluated to determine whether they are truly improving women’s lives. And finally, social messaging affirming the idea that water work belongs only to women must be abandoned. Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has called empowerment of the world’s women “a global imperative.” To attain that goal, we must reduce the weight of water on women’s shoulders.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Photo: Riccardo Niels Mayer

TREATMENT OF HAITIAN MIGRANTS PROMPT OUTRAGE WASHINGTON — Images of Border Patrol agents on horses, pushing back Haitian migrants crossing the Rio Grande to try to reach U.S. soil, have prompted outrage among Democrats and called into question President Biden’s decision to swiftly deport thousands who had been arriving en masse at a small Texas border town. Vice President Kamala Harris called the treatment “horrible” and said she planned to discuss the issue with Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of the Homeland Security Department, which has started an investigation. “Human beings should never be treated that way,” Ms. Harris said. “And I’m deeply troubled about it.” Asked if Mr. Biden had seen the images, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: “He believes that the footage and photos are horrific. They don’t represent who we are as a country. And he was pleased to see the announcement of the investigation.”

The sands of time have rendered fear Blue skies on high no longer clear Stars were bright whence they came Now dimmed, obscured, pollution's haze Crystal clear our waters gleamed Fish abundant, rivers streamed Ocean floors sandy white Now littered, brown, pollution's plight Trees towered high above Trunks baring professed love Birds chirping from sites unseen Gone, paper joined pollution's team One can't blame pollution alone As they say, you reap what you've sown So let us plant a better seed Tear out old roots, cultivate, weed Protect what has been given for free Our waters, skies, wildlife and trees For once they're gone, don't you say Consider yourself warned of that fatal day Published by Family Friend Poems on 10/21/2015