World Water Week 2026: The Water Crisis SIHF Fellows Confront in Peru and Uganda

One in four people globally still lacks access to safely managed drinking water. One hundred and six million drink directly from untreated surface sources (WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme).

Those numbers were published last year during World Water Week. They describe, with precision, a crisis that most of the people reading them will never experience personally.

FIMRC's Summer International Health Fellowship (SIHF) fellows are different. They go to where those numbers have faces.

World Water Week 2026 takes place August 23 to 27, under the theme Water for People and Progress, convening policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to advance solutions for a more just and water-secure future. In Huancayo, Peru and Bududa, Uganda, SIHF fellows are not at a conference. They are in the communities those conferences are trying to reach.

WASH Week: Not a Curriculum Module, a Week of Reckoning

The SIHF program is structured around four thematic weeks, each designed to build a layer of public health understanding. Week 2 is dedicated entirely to WASH: Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene.

It is, consistently, one of the most disorienting weeks of the fellowship.

Not because the content is unfamiliar,  most SIHF fellows have studied WASH frameworks in class. But because understanding water insecurity in a lecture hall and understanding it while standing in a highland community outside Huancayo, watching a family collect water from a source they know is not safe, are two entirely different experiences.

The knowledge does not change. The weight of it does.

Water Access in Peru and Uganda: Same Gap, Different Faces

In Peru's Sierra and rural zones, water access remains significantly below urban levels. One fifth of rural households rely on unimproved or surface water sources — rivers, streams, and collection points that would not pass a basic safety threshold. In the highland communities around Huancayo where FIMRC's SIHF operates, that statistic is visible in daily life. Families store water in containers that become breeding grounds for the same pathogens that arrive at the clinic weeks later as diarrheal disease, stunting, and preventable childhood illness.

In Bududa, Uganda, the picture shifts geographically but not in its essential character. Uganda is among the countries in Eastern and Southern Africa with the largest populations lacking access to basic sanitation. While government data reports that 82% of villages now have access to at least one safe water source, the gap between having access to a source and having access to safely managed drinking water remains significant — particularly in rural districts like Bududa, where infrastructure is sparse and the distance between a water point and a household is measured in time and terrain, not meters.

SIHF fellows spend time in both realities. The contrast between what national data suggests and what daily community life actually reveals is itself one of the most formative parts of the fellowship.

What SIHF Fellows Study During WASH Week

WASH Week is not a passive observation exercise.

Fellows engage with the structural, behavioral, and environmental dimensions of water insecurity through:

• Field analysis of local water systems, sources, treatment, distribution, and the points where safety breaks down
• Household-level assessment of hygiene practices and the behavioral factors that shape them
• Examination of how WASH infrastructure failures translate directly into the clinical burden observed in health facilities
• Community hygiene education sessions delivered alongside local health workers
• Study of the social and economic factors that make water insecurity persistent even when solutions technically exist
• Review of how local health systems track and respond to waterborne disease outbreaks with limited surveillance capacity

By the end of the week, fellows do not just understand what WASH means. They understand why it is hard, and what closing the gap between policy and community-level practice actually requires.

Why Water Security Is The Foundation, Not a Separate Issue

Water insecurity does not exist in isolation.

A child who drinks from an unimproved source faces more than the immediate risk of diarrheal disease. She faces compounded nutritional deficits because her gut absorbs less of what she eats. She faces developmental consequences that surface years later in school performance and cognitive capacity. She faces a maternal health risk if she becomes pregnant in a household without safe sanitation.

SIHF fellows who study WASH within the full fellowship curriculum begin to see these connections not as theoretical linkages but as clinical realities. The child with stunting in Week 1's nutrition module lives in the same household whose water source they analyze in Week 2. The waterborne illness in the clinic is the downstream consequence of the upstream infrastructure gap they walked past that morning.

World Water Week 2026 places particular attention on communities facing persistent inequality, framing water security as a foundation for health and human development, not a separate issue alongside it. SIHF fellows experience that framing not as a conference theme but as the daily reality of the communities they serve.

Water for People. Progress That Starts in the Field

The gap between a global commitment to water security and the moment a family in Bududa or Huancayo actually has access to safe water is not closed in Stockholm.

It is closed in communities, by health workers and educators who show up consistently, who earn trust over time, and who understand the social and structural context well enough to deliver education that actually changes behavior.

FIMRC's SIHF program trains the next generation of those professionals. In the field. In the communities. In the weeks that leave fellows unable to think about WASH the same way again.

If you are a pre-med, nursing, or public health student ready to understand water security not as a global statistic but as a lived reality, this fellowship is where that understanding begins.

FAQ SECTION

What is World Water Week 2026 and what is its theme?
World Water Week 2026 takes place August 23 to 27 in Stockholm, organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute. The theme, Water for People and Progress, focuses on advancing a more just and equitable water-secure future — with particular attention to communities facing persistent inequality, and water and gender as a prominent topic aligned with the UN World Water Development Report.

What is WASH and why is it a core part of the SIHF curriculum?
WASH stands for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene — three interconnected public health domains that together determine whether communities can prevent waterborne disease, support healthy development, and sustain basic human dignity. FIMRC's SIHF dedicates an entire week to WASH because water insecurity is one of the most significant drivers of the health disparities fellows observe across every area of the curriculum — from child malnutrition to maternal health to infectious disease burden.

What does WASH Week involve for SIHF fellows in Peru and Uganda?
During WASH Week, fellows study local water systems and their failure points, analyze household hygiene practices, participate in community health education sessions, examine how waterborne disease presents in clinical settings, and explore the structural and behavioral factors that make water insecurity persistent. The week is designed to build both analytical and practical understanding — not just what WASH is, but why closing the gap between policy and community-level reality is so difficult.

What is the water situation like in the communities FIMRC's SIHF serves?
In highland Peru, one fifth of rural households rely on unimproved or surface water sources. In Bududa, Uganda, rural communities face a significant gap between having access to a water source and having access to safely managed drinking water. In both settings, water insecurity drives diarrheal disease, child stunting, and the broader health burden that SIHF fellows encounter across all four weeks of the fellowship.

Who is eligible for FIMRC's Summer International Health Fellowship?
The SIHF is designed for pre-med students, public health majors, nursing students, and early-career healthcare professionals seeking a structured, curriculum-driven global health experience. Fellows work alongside local professionals in Peru or Uganda over a month-long program that combines clinical exposure, public health fieldwork, and deep cultural immersion.

How is the SIHF different from a short-term medical mission trip?
Unlike short-term mission trips, SIHF is a month-long, curriculum-based fellowship built around four progressive thematic weeks — nutrition, WASH, infectious disease, and maternal/child health — rather than a single service activity. Fellows work alongside the same local health teams throughout the program, allowing for deeper community relationships and a more structured understanding of how public health systems function under real-world constraints.

How much does the SIHF program cost, and what is included?
Program costs vary by session length and location and typically cover in-country housing, meals, local transportation, program supervision, and curriculum materials. International flights and travel insurance are generally the fellow's responsibility. Book a call with our team for current pricing, or contact the fellowship team directly for a full breakdown.