Providing Clean Water During An Emergency

“I was trying to save them from this unfortunate war, but had no way of keeping them safe from disease,” Ahmad said of his search to find clean water for his family in the midst of Yemen’s devastating civil war.

After continued airstrikes destroyed his farm and threatened the lives of his family, the 33-year-old moved with his wife and two children from Hajjah to the capital in Sana’a. Once there, Ahmad struggled to keep his children healthy. “My children fell sick many times due to unclean water and poor hygiene,” Ahmad recalled. High rent prices and cost of living made Ahmad’s search for housing with access to clean water even harder. After multiple relocations, Ahmad’s family was finally able to settle in Shamlan village, where International Medical Corps operates a water truck that brings clean water to the nearby population.

To manage the spread of disease and save lives, International Medical Corps is reaching men, women, and children like Ahmad and his family in Aden, Lahj, Ibb, Taiz and Sana’a with critically needed clean water, sanitation services, and hygiene promotion. This includes operating water trucks to provide safe water to communities and health facilities, chlorinating communal water tanks, monitoring water quality at cholera hot spots, and training community volunteers on cholera specific hygiene topics. So far this year up to the end of July, we have provided clean water to 511,903 individuals using water trucks, and reached another 289,267 people with messaging about maintaining proper hygiene.

The need for further clean water and sanitation improvement remains high as over two years of conflict in Yemen have turned the country’s health concerns into health crises. Yemen’s deterioration of health services and the destruction of water infrastructure have led to the world’s largest ever single-year cholera outbreak, with the total number of suspected cases reaching 700,000 in September, with 2,000 deaths. Water-borne diseases infect an estimated 5,000 people per day and many of those working on the frontlines of defense against these illnesses, Yemeni health workers, are severely under-resourced. 30,000 Yemeni health workers have worked without pay for over a year.

For Ahmad and his family, International Medical Corps’ water trucks in Shamlan gave them new access to safe water. The family no longer has to spend hours of their day walking long distances to fetch water from clean water points, an exercise they used to do often. Since their move to Shamlan, Ahmad’s children have not fallen sick to water-borne illness and Ahmad considers this new access to water “a great blessing.”

We thank the GlobalGiving family for their support as we provide clean water, hygiene awareness, and sanitation services to Yemenis during the county’s cholera emergency.