Collecting drinking water in low and middle income countries can cause serious injury, particularly for women, according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new international study published in BMJ Global Health reveals dangers including falls, traffic accidents, animal attacks, and fights, which can result in broken bones, spinal injuries, lacerations, and other physical injuries. And women are most likely to sustain such injuries — highlighting the social the social and gender inequities of a hidden global health challenge.
Dr Jo-Anne Geere, from UEA’s School of Health Sciences, said: “Millions of people don’t have the luxury of clean drinking water at their home, and they face many dangers before the water even touches their lips. “Global research on water has largely focused on scarcity and health issues related to what is in the water, but the burden and risks of how water is retrieved and carried has been overlooked until now. “We wanted to better understand the true burden of water insecurity.”
The research team used a large global dataset to understand what factors might predict water-fetching injuries. The work draws on a survey of 6,291 randomly selected households across 24 sites in 21 low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. They found that 13 per cent of the respondents reported some sort of injury while collecting water, and that women were twice as likely to be hurt as men. Prof Paul Hunter, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “This reinforces how the burden of water scarcity disproportionately falls on women, on rural populations, and on those who do not have water sources close to home.”
Source: Science Daily
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