Only 23% of schools in Malawi are equipped with sanitation facilities and only 19% have access to hand-washing facilities. Both teachers and children are severely disadvantaged by the lack of sanitation and are often forced to suffer preventable diseases as a consequence.
Many children 'drop-out' due to poverty and the lack of funds and resources necessary to attend school. Girls of menstruation age are, however, the worst affected by the lack of sanitation, making it extremely difficult to catch-up with other learners and, again, contributes to the high drop-out rate.
The lack of education and the need to survive inevitably leads to child marriages, with statistics revealing that Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriages in the world, with 46% of girls married by the age of 18.
