The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for more attention to African women, saying that women, water and basic hygiene are key to change on the African continent.

According to a press release from the UN agency available here Thursday, women, water and basic hygiene are the key to creating lasting change in Africa, but national water and sanitation plans are still leaving women out.

UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman on Wednesday called for more attention and funds to help the millions of African women and girls suffering disproportionately for lack of these basic services.

"Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene habits play a major role in child mortality," Veneman said, adding that " bringing basic services to Africa's women and girls could transform their lives and boost child survival in the region."

Veneman said she is joining many health officials in the Women Leaders for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) initiative.

Launched last year by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), WASH helps governments to link women with sanitation and hygiene programs, and supports the UNICEF drive to put safe water and basic sanitation into all primary schools by 2015. The group is meeting at UNICEF on Wednesday in New York to set out a plan of action for Africa.

Lack of safe water and sanitation remains one of the world's most urgent health issues. Some 1.1 billion people worldwide still lack safe water and 2.6 billion have no sanitation, according to a UNICEF and World Health Organization 2005 report Water for Life.

In rural Africa, 19 percent of women spend more than one hour on each trip to fetch water, an exhausting and often dangerous chore that robs them of the chance to work and learn. Women without toilets are forced to defecate in the open, risking their dignity and personal safety.

Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene habits play a major role in Africa's high child mortality rate. Diarrhoea is the third-biggest child killer in Africa after pneumonia and malaria, accounting for 701,000 child deaths out of 4.4 million on the continent every year. It also leaves millions of children with a legacy of chronic malnutrition, the underlying cause of over half of all child mortality.

Source: Xinhua