A quarter of the world’s health facilities lack basic amenities including water services, directly affecting 2 billion people.
The United Nations warns that unhygienic conditions could fuel the global rise of deadly superbugs.
A report showed that the poorest countries have about half of facilities lacking basic water services.
This implies that water is gotten without the use of pipes or boreholes that protect it from faeces, endangering the lives of birthing mothers and newborns.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) attributed over 1 million deaths a year to unclean births, owing to the fact that 15 percent of all patients attending a health facility developed infections.
“Hospitals are not necessarily points of care where you can heal, but points of almost infection. (We) are very alarmed by this,” WHO public health co-ordinator Bruce Gordon told a media briefing in Geneva.
About 900 million people in the world are greatly lacking water at their local health facility or have to use unprotected wells or springs. One-fifth of available health facilities lack toilets, directly affecting about 1.5 billion people, the health agencies said.
This is a far cry to one of the development goals agreed by world leaders in 2015 which is for all to have access to safe water and sanitation by 2030.
