I want to drink you so bad 2.0: water project for the Orotta Hospital in Asmara, Eritrea

Title of the project

I want to drink you so bad 2.0: water project for the Orotta Hospital

Place of the action

Asmara, Eritrea

Description of the context

Although Eritrea has improved in water management as the government, non-governmental organizations and private companies joined their efforts with local communities, in 2020, according to a study by World Vision (https://www.worldvision.org / clean-water-news-stories / 10-worst-countries-access-clean-water), 80.7% lof Eritrean population was lacking basic water service. This leads to dramatic consequences such as:

• Sanitation and contamination of public water sources: without basic access to clean water, Eritrean citizens are often forced to use public water sources such as rivers and streams for carrying out their daily activities. People cook and shower with the same water. Therefore, the water sources might become contaminated over time. Water contamination can therefore lead to life-threatening diseases.

• Diseases: Diarrheal disease is a type of intestinal infection that usually spreads through contaminated water. Water bacteria and viruses need a host to survive. Diarrheal disease is rare to be fatal, but death can occur if a person loses more than 10% of their body’s water. According to UNICEF, diarrheal disease is the leading cause of death for children under 5 in Eritrea. Cholera is an infectious disease that is also caused by contaminated water sources. Symptoms are watery diarrhea and abdominal pain. This disease can be fatal if a person does not receive treatment in time because the body eventually dehydrates.

• Poverty: Lack of clean water and poverty in Eritrea are linked to each other. Accessing clean water means being able to cook, bathe and drink. In addition to covering basic needs, it also helps businesses operate safely, keep children healthy, and reduce vulnerability during a natural disaster.

Eritrea has only one Referral Paediatric Hospital, the Orotta Paediatric Hospital, founded by Italian community in 1930: there are about 130 daily admissions of paediatric patients. The water supply of the Orotta hospital comes from the public aqueduct and from the osmosis system of the water network and distribution of potable and non-potable water carried out in the first phase of the project “I want to drink you so bad” which is currently still going on. Considering that the water provided by the aqueduct does not meet the needs of the hospital wards in quantitative terms, we decided to extend the distribution network of drinking and non-drinking water to all the buildings of the Orotta Hospital where health activities are carried out.

The project

In this second phase of the project “I want to drink you so bad”, we aim at extending the distribution network of drinking and non-drinking water to all the buildings of the Orotta Hospital where health activities are carried out. Our aim is to guarantee the water availability in a consistent and reliable manner. Simultaneously, we will make excavations works in order to lay down two cable ducts for the transport of electricity and for the future computer connection among the buildings themselves.

The project is totally funded by the Italian Agency for Development- Khartoum.

Achieved results

In this section, the results of the project will be reported.