A global Crisis
- With a world population of 7 billion, 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water – about one in six worldwide
- 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation – almost one third of the world’s population
- The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates diarrhoea kills around 2.2 million people a year, worldwide
- 1.4 million children die every year from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation
- Every day 5,000 children die from water-related diseases
- One in four children who die before age 5 worldwide, die of a water related disease
- A child dies every 15 seconds from a water-related diseases
- In Africa, 91% of the estimated 881,000 deaths were from malaria and 85% were children under 5 years of age (WHO report 2008)
Water and Hygiene
- In rural areas, 8 out of 10 people live without safe water
- Many women and young girls in developing countries must walk as much as six miles every day to collect dirty water to drink for their families
- Households in rural Africa spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, and it is generally women who are burdened with the task
- The weight of the water container that women in Africa carry on their heads can be up to 20 kg/44 lbs
- The average person in the developing world uses less than 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking – average in the developed world is 200 litres per day
- When sanitation is available the number of girls attending schools increase by 11%
- Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world’s water consumption
- Based on current usage over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water than they do now
- The integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%
- The basic practice of hand-washing with soap can reduce the incidence of diarrhoea by up to 47% or 1 billion people each year
Source: WHO/UNICEF
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