DAMASCUS, Syria
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned that children in Syria are facing high risks of diseases due to dwindling supplies of safe drinking water and extreme summer heat.
“Dwindling supplies of safe drinking water during Syria’s scorching summer months are exposing children to the threat of water-borne diseases,” the UNICEF said in a statement Friday.
The statement underlined that since the beginning of the year, at least 105,886 acute diarrhea cases were observed and 1,700 cases of Hepatitis A were recorded in one week alone last February.
“The situation is alarming particularly for children who are susceptible to water-borne diseases,” Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s Representative in Syria, said.
UNICEF is appealing for $5 million by August end for its water, sanitation and hygiene response inside Syria.
“With the crisis now in its fifth year, water has become even more scarce and unsafe, and poor hygiene conditions, especially among the displaced communities are putting more children at severe risk,” Singer said.
The UNICEF report highlighted the area of Deir-Ez-Zour located in the country’s east as having high risk of outbreak.
“Raw sewage is causing serious contamination to the Euphrates River on which the local population depends for its water supply. In the area, 1,144 of typhoid cases have been reported,” the statement said.
“Since the beginning of the crisis, we’ve been working with a range of partners to support the vital water infrastructure on which some 15 million people in Syria depend,” the statement said. “This includes drilling and equipping wells as alternative sources of water as well as supporting the local production and procurement of water treatment supplies,” it added.
The number of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria to neighboring countries has passed four million, the UN said on Thursday. Turkey is sheltering almost half this total.
