Even in the best of times, Ethiopia struggles against
poverty, preventable diseases, and child mortality.
With a
population
of 60 million and per capita income of about $110, it is one of the five
poorest countries in the world. The country's under
-five mortality rate of
173 per thousand ranks it 18th in the world - some 1,300 children under
five die every day. Overall life
expectancy averages 43 years (5th
lowest in the world), and stunting among children due to poor nutrition is
66 per cent (highest in
the world).
Under normal
circumstances less than 20 per cent of Ethiopia's population has
access to
safe drinking water. (Only Afghanistan, Micronesia,
and neighboring Eritrea are worse off.) Access
is lowest in rural
areas, where more than 80 per cent of the population resides.
Because such a high percentage of the population is rural and
depends on pasture or
farmland for subsistence, variations in the
weather have powerful consequences. Drought conditions have
developed every few years since the early 1970s, the worst episode
occurring in
1984-85, when an estimated 800,000 people perished. In
the 1990s significant droughts occurred in
1991, 1994 and 1997.
UNICEF has operated in Ethiopia since 1952, and the agency's
water and sanitation programmers
were introduced, in part, as a response
to the 1973 drought here. Today UNICEF provides some
$3 million a year to
support water and sanitation projects throughout Ethiopia. The largest
part of this
sum consists of supplies and cash grants to the government in
support of specific, agreed-upon
projects. |
Since the drought of 1984-85,
UNICEF has invested some $50 million in water schemes in the country,
including the equipment,
spare parts and technical support needed for
constructing hundreds of new wells, reservoirs, and pumping and filtration
systems. |
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