The Crisis.
Over 1.1 billion people on the planet do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion live without basic sanitation.
In the past 100 years the growth in water use has doubled population growth. The result? By 2025, two-thirds of the world could be living under conditions of water stress.
Impact on Our Lives and Our Children.
The global water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than all armed conflicts combined.
9,800 of us die each day as a result of water-borne diseases; most of these victims are children less than 5 years old.
Every 20 seconds a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. This figure represents about 20% of the deaths of children under five worldwide. Improved sanitation along with basic hygiene improvements (such as hand washing) could reduce diarrhea-related deaths in children by two-thirds.
In Africa alone, 40 billion working hours per year are spent fetching water. This burden most often falls on women and children, who walk an average of six kilometers every day to access clean water.
Waterborne Sickness.
At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related diseases.
Globally, diarrhea is the leading cause of illness and death - 88% of diarrheal deaths are due to a lack of sanitation facilities, unsafe drinking water, and inadequate availability of water for hygiene.
Each year, 443 million school days are lost due to water related illnesses.
Water Issues & Poverty.
Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city. This price fluctuation prevents many poverty-stricken people in developing areas from purchasing clean water, and as a result, these people have to use dirty, polluted water.
3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases. 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, only about one in three people have access to adequate sanitation and treating diarrhea consumes 12 percent of the health budget.
Every $1 invested in water and sanitation returns an average of $8 in productivity gains and costs averted.
Global Usage Comparisons.
A regular five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person in a developing-country slum uses in an entire day.
The daily water requirement for sanitation, bathing, cooking needs, and to assure survival, is about 13.2 gallons per person.
In the developed world, the average person uses 100 to 176 gallons of water every day compared with an entire family in the developing world who uses only 5 gallons.
$100 billion is spent on bottled water every year. According to UN estimates, it would take less than one third of this amount to provide clean, safe water to the entire world.
References:
Joint Monitoring Programme on Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP)
Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC)
World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF)
