Access to Healthy Water

Several years ago while residing in Charleston, SC, I attended a symposium at The Citadel Military College.  The speaker was the founder of Water Missions International, which is a non-profit Christian engineering organization that provides sustainable safe water and sanitation solutions for people in developing countries as well as disaster areas.  During the symposium, the speaker passed around a plastic water bottle filled with, what we in the audience viewed as dirty, unclean and unsafe water but in fact it was drinking water from one of the developing countries.  Since then I made a point of not wasting water, I've also tried to instill in my children the importance of not wasting water, by having them doing little things like not letting the water run while they are brushing their teeth and limiting the amount of time they take in the shower.  Today, nearly 1 billion people in the developing world don't have access to clean, safe drinking water. Yet we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from plastic bottles.  Safe water is the source of life; it is the foundation for health, education and viable economies.

According the United Nations and UNICEF, one of five girls of primary-school age are not in school, compared to one in six boys.  One reason for this is the lack of sanitation facilities for girls reaching puberty.  Girls are also more likely to be responsible for collecting the water for the family, making it difficult for them to attend school during school hours.  The installation of toilets and latrines may enable school children, especially menstruating girls to further their education by remaining in the school system.  Globally, diarrhea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88% of diarrhea deaths are due to lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water.

Today nearly 2.5 billion people, including almost 1 billion children live without basic sanitation.  Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation.  This equates to 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.

Childbirth

During the birth of my first child,  I was in labor and wasn’t even aware that I was, because I have always heard all these horror stories about how painful going into labor was; so when I actually went into labor I didn’t realize that’s what it was.  I felt very sharp pains in the lower part of my back that I admit was different from any other pain I had ever felt, but it was not the type of labor pain I had heard about.  I was visiting with my mother at the time and told her that I felt I was in labor and that we should go to the hospital.  Shortly, after arriving at the hospital, after being checked my the doctor I was immediately rushed to the delivery room, remembering the attendant telling me not to push, I yelled out once telling them I can’t help not to push and delivered my daughter right outside the delivery room.  No epidural, no time to prep me for delivery she was ready to enter into her new world. It was the greatest experience of my life.  I’ve had two other births and all three births were different. 

Child birth in Japan has a rich tradition for the last 13,000 years, with families passing down customs for generations.  During child birth the fathers are not allowed in the delivery room unless they have taken prenatal courses with the mother, they are also not allowed in delivery room during a C-section.  Traditionally Japanese mothers do not take medication during labor due to their Buddhist religious beliefs and also due to their customary belief that the pain of childbirth is their life test to the challenging responsibilities as a mother.  During childbirth it is customary for Japanese mothers to remain very quiet while in childbirth rather than yelling, which is considered shameful to her family.  Japanese women also have a longer stay in the hospital than most women in Western countries; babies stay with the mothers during the daytime while she is in the hospital and at night the infant is taken to the hospital nursery.