Currently, about 3.4 million children in Ukraine have limited access to water and sanitation, said Munir Mammadzadeh, UNICEF Representative in Ukraine.
“We know that about 3.4 million children have problems with access to water and sanitation, and the problem is especially acute in the frontline regions,” he said in an interview withInterfax-Ukraine.
That is why the supply of drinking water and hygiene kits is one of the key tasks for UNICEF. In addition, the UN Children’s Fund is working with water utilities on large-scale projects to restore infrastructure to make drinking water available. According to Mammadzadeh, even if children are not directly exposed to the risk of hostilities or attacks, the lack of normal life and anxiety also significantly affects their mental health.
UNICEF pays a lot of attention to the psychological problems of children and adolescents in the context of war.
“This is one of the areas where a lot of work is being done, as 1.5 million children in Ukraine today face problems such as depression, insomnia, and anxiety. We also know that during this thousand days, children have spent 2,800 to 4,800 hours in shelters while regular alarms sound – these estimates show the scale of the war’s impact on children: since the beginning of the war, they have spent an average of 4 to 6.5 months in shelters,” Mammadzadeh said.
He noted that a number of programs are already being organized to provide psychological assistance to children in Ukraine. For example, resilience centers in local communities already include mental health components as basic services. UNICEF also cooperates with Ukrainian universities to train good mental health professionals and works with school teachers and psychologists to help them recognize the elements of anxiety in children and provide basic assistance.
