A UNICEF Success Story from Haiti

A girl fishes for shrimp in a sewage-infested pond left by Tropical Storm Jeanne in the northern city of Gonaives, capital of Artibonite Department.

UNICEF has been working in Haiti since 1949. Since 2006, UNICEF water and sanitation programs successfully restored over 200 wells with hand pumps in Haiti, and rehabilitated over 25 water gravity systems. But the devastating January 2010 earthquake dealt a serious blow to UNICEF's progress in Haiti. Within a single minute, Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns lay in ruins. And UNICEF's water and sanitation work shifted into full-tilt emergency response.

In the wake of any emergency, it's imperative survivors have access to clean water and sanitation to ensure deadly waterborne diseases like cholera don't get a foothold. Just after the Haiti earthquake, UNICEF was tapped to take the lead on water and sanitation relief efforts. Soon UNICEF was providing potable water for 235,000 people at hospitals and distribution points around Port-au-Prince, and water distribution continued to scale up significantly. Three weeks after the earthquake, UNICEF was reaching half a million people with a consistent supply of clean, safe water.

Working with the Haitian government and other partners, UNICEF set up collapsible tanks, known as water bladders, at sites throughout Port-au-Prince. Large capacity water trucks replenished the bladders daily. In the capital's main public park, Champs de Mars, a 10,000-liter bladder — set up in the shadow of a monument — provided survivors camped there with desperately needed water to stave off both dehydration and disease. Children are particularly vulnerable to cholera and other diarrheal diseases; UNICEF worked around the clock to help ensure that no child in Haiti who survived the earthquake died because of preventable waterborne disease.

Haiti faces a long road to recovery. The earthquake destroyed not just lives, but the infrastructure for essential services like water and sanitation. Even before the earthquake, only 55 percet of Haiti's 9.6 million inhabitants had access to safe drinking water, and only 30 percent had the benefit of sanitation facilities. But UNICEF is committed to helping Haiti "build back better." Funds raised through the UNICEF Tap Project will be critical to rebuilding wells and water pumps, and providing the Haitian people with the tools for long-term recovery.