BIOSECURITY WITHOUT CLEAN WATER

I was with my little cousin watching a documentary called "The end of poverty?" which talks about global poverty and how it isn't something new and it explained how poverty has accumulated over the centuries affecting human history. Of course, my little cousin didn't magnify the figures and scientific studies, however, she perfectly understood the images and the situation in which the people in the documentary found themselves. 

I asked her to wash her hands to comply with these new habits and biosecurity measures that we are acquiring and she asked me: "do they wash their hands?" And I said doubting "No", to what she asked "and why?", then I said to her: "because they are not fortunate enough to have clean water like us", to which she replied: "so how they fight against the coronavirus bug?" And that question left me wondering, what is biosafety like in societies where there is no type of health security? how are they dealing with it? and what consequences this could have?

We know we have to wash our hands at least every 3 hours for 20 seconds to prevent outbreaks. But what we don't know is that 40% of the world's population lack access to basic hand-washing facilities in their homes. So, for some is just a simple gesture but for others around the world is a luxury they cannot afford and this could bring enourmous consequences such as the SDG's inform: billions of people must displace their regions because of water scarcity. Can you imagine yourself walking thousand miles searching for water? Well, this is the reality of many people around the world and we are not aware of. Our day to day is to think on what we're going to spend our money, if we should buy cellphone A or cellphone B, where it would be our next vacations and we don't realize how lucky we are to have water at least every 50 meters. 

The investment to solve this problem on provide limited resources to all societies has been slow since governments refuge saying it is an environmental problem, nonetheless the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that it is a economic concern and that the main problem is corruption, mismanagement of water resources and that governments do not have any idea on how current and future short-term demand matches the available surface and groundwater supplies, so we waste more than we can.

With this desinformation about resources, we create an uneducated society that only spends and does not worry about the future of its actions.

So here I am, unable to give an answer to an 8-year-old girl who doesn't understand why they don't have water to wash their hands like we do. Because deep down, we ourselves are the ones to blame for this happening, human greed and hunger for power make us blind to problems like these. And knowing that these people don't have the way to take care of a virus as lethal as covid and not because they don't want to but because they literally CAN'T saddens me a lot and makes me reflect on society and the inequalities in which we live.

I read a phrase at the beginning of the quarantine that said: "Let's be patient, we are all in the same boat", to which someone replied: "No, we are not in the same boat, we are in the same sea, some in a yacht, others in a boat, others in life jackets and others swimming with all their might" and damn he is right.