Water Facts:

1.1 billion, or 1,100,000,000 people lack water that is even moderately clean.

2.6 billion or 40% of the world does not have access to adequate sanitation today.

3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.

43% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea.

84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 - 14.

98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.

884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.

The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

At any given time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.

Less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.

An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. More than two thirds of people without an improved water source live on less than $2 a day.

Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city or even Americans.

Without food a person can live for weeks, but without water you can expect to live only a few days.

Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring (we intended to remedy this).

Sanitation:

Only 62% of the world's population has access to improved sanitation - defined as a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.

Lack of sanitation is the world's biggest cause of infection, clean water is needed for sanitation.

At any one time, more than half of the poor in the developing world are ill from causes related to hygiene, sanitation and water supply.

88% of cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene.

Of the 60 million people added to the world's towns and cities every year, most occupy impoverished slums and shanty-towns with no sanitation facilities.

It is estimated that improved sanitation facilities could reduce diarrhea-related deaths in young children by more than one-third. If hygiene promotion is added, such as teaching proper hand washing, deaths could be reduced by two thirds. It would also help accelerate economic and social development in countries where sanitation is a major cause of lost work and school days because of illness.

Impacts on Children:

Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.

1.5 million children die each year from Diarrheal diseases from lack of clean water and sanitation, that’s 4110 each day, 171 each hour, or one child every 21 seconds!

84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 - 14.

REFERENCES:

• 2006 United Nations Human Development Report.
• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website.
• Number estimated from statistics in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report.
• Asian Development Bank web site. 2009.
• The Discovery Channel web site. 2009.