Samaritan's Purse International (UK), the Christian humanitarian aid charity, is to launch a major new campaign to raise funds to provide safe sources of clean water as part of a strategy to save lives and improve health and sanitation in the developing world.
The campaign will be launched on 22 March - World Water Day - and is called 'Turn On The Tap'.
It will concentrate initially on countries in Africa where Samaritan's Purse has a special focus - Mozambique, Liberia and Ethiopia.
Jonathan Hett, Head of Programmes and Projects with Samaritan's Purse International (UK), outlined the main aims of the project: "The lack of clean water is the biggest cause of disease in the world today, with one child dying every 20 seconds - over 4,000 per day - as a result of illness and diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. It is staggering to realise that 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe water."
He added: "I have worked in several East African countries where the impact of the lack of safe water to drink is not only on individuals' health but also on economic development. Often children are obliged to spend their day fetching water from the nearest source, sometimes several miles away, and are unable to attend school. This traps them in a cycle of subsistence living and ill health."
