Sudan wins a key African award for hygiene and sanitation

 

 

KARTHUM, Sudan, November 12, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — The Sudanese Government’s Water and Environmental Sanitation Department (WES) in the north of the country has won a top prize in a pan-African competition for hygiene and sanitation.

 

WES, which works closely with UNICEF in Sudan, has come second in the African Ministers’ Council of Water AfricaSan Awards in the Leadership and Ministerial category.

 

The award will be officially announced on November 12th 2009 during the Second African Water Week which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

“We would like to congratulate our partners in the Water and Environmental Sanitation Department. This award reflects all of their hard work in trying to provide clean water and good sanitation facilities to people across the north of the country,” said Nils Kastberg, UNICEF’s Representative in Sudan.

 

“I hope this award leads to the WES department receiving additional resources so we can reduce the estimated 60,000 children who die in Sudan every year from diarrhea, one of the three big killers of children under the age of five ” he added.

 

“I believe this will be an encouragement to the government to try to reach the remaining 40 per cent of the population which does not have access to safe drinking water and the two-thirds that don’t have adequate sanitation,” Mr Kastberg said.

 

WES works in 15 northern Sudanese states to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services to vulnerable and rural communities. UNICEF has been supporting WES to provide safe water and promote improved sanitation and hygiene practices since the 1990s.

 

AMCOW’s Leadership and Ministerial Award honors individuals or institutions who have provided strong leadership in sanitation and/or hygiene improvement through policy and strategy development, advocacy, institutional arrangements, financing, coordination and capacity development.

“WES is a unique governmental institution because of its bottom-up structure which has allowed strong community relations to develop over the past decades,” said UNICEF’s head of Water and Environmental Sanitation Sampath Kumar.

Mr Kumar said:”WES has taken the lead in many instances to provide humanitarian intervention with UNICEF’s support. WES stepped up to the plate to handle water and environmental sanitation activities in the ongoing Darfur emergency.”

“In addition to establishing a strong presence in rural communities, WES has worked extensively in Eastern Sudan to provide aid to flood ravaged communities,” Mr Kumar added.

WES is part of the Public Water Corporation which is part of the Federal Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources.

 

About UNICEF

UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, safe water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

 

For further information, please contact:

Amber Henshaw, UNICEF Sudan tel: +249 (0) 156 553 675 e-mail: ahenshaw@unicef.org

 

SOURCE 

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)