Billion suffer without clean water

A sixth of the world's population - more than a billion people - do not have access to clean drinking water, UN figures show.

Around 2.4 billion people suffer from poor sanitation, while in Africa the average person spends five hours a day collecting water.

The global water crisis has significantly contributed to poor nutrition, leaving hundreds of thousands of children stunted in growth and development.

Bad diet also hampers the plight of the growing number of HIV and Aids sufferers across Africa, in places such as the North West Province in South Africa.

Drier and more barren than southern parts of the country, locals struggle to find enough water to survive.

Although water sources exist, unreliable pumps and contaminated water mean they are often not easy to find.

African sustainable development charity, Excellent Development, said it is marking World Water Day by celebrating having built 100 small scale sand dams in semi arid Kenya since 2003.

The dams are providing clean water to over 100,000 people.

The charity works with Kenyan community groups who are pioneering the innovative technology of sand dams to combat the pressures of drought, deforestation and climate change in semi-arid Africa.

Their triple approach to conserving soil and water by building sand dams, digging terraces and planting trees transforms the micro-climate by permanently increasing the water table and creating the environment for increased food production.

Sand dams, which are essentially reinforced concrete walls built across seasonal river beds, retain water below the sand that collects behind them.

They provide a clean water supply during the dry season as well as avoiding the evaporation and malaria risk of conventional open water dams.

Rhoda Silu is a member of the Utooni Development Project, a self help group that was the original inspiration for Excellent Development.

She said: "The dams enable us to save our time and that enables us to do much more work on our farms than before, which helps us earn money from vegetables and increased production of staple crops.

"Diarrhoea, a major child killer, has reduced by 95 per cent in our area due to the clean water from sand dams. So many children now attend school regularly because their mothers don't need them to look after the home whilst they collect water."

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