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“The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses” – General Comment No. 15 (2002): The Right to Water

"Water and Sanitation is one of the primary drivers of public health. I often refer to it as “Health 101”, which means that once we can secure access to clean water and to adequate sanitation facilities for all people, irrespective of the difference in their living conditions, a huge battle against all kinds of diseases will be won."   Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General, World Health Organization

“We shall not finally defeat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, or any of the other infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have also won the battle for safe drinking water, sanitation and basic health care.”  Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General

"I am utterly convinced that the number of water taps per 1,000 population will be an infinitely more meaningful health indicator than the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population." Dr. Halfdan Mahler, Director-General, World Health Organization

Water Facts and Figures

• 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe water, roughly one-sixth of the world’s population.

• 2.4 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, about two-fifths of the world’s population.

• 2.2 million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

• Some 6,000 children die every day from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene – equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.

• At any one time it is estimated that half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases.

• 200 million people in the world are infected with schistosomiasis, of whom 20 million suffer severe consequences. The disease is still found in 74 countries of the world. Scientific studies show that a 77% reduction of incidence from the disease was achieved through well designed water and sanitation interventions.

• The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 km.

• The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is the equivalent of your airport luggage allowance (20kg).

• The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water a day.

• The average person in the United Kingdom uses 135 litres of water every day.

• One flush of your toilet uses as much water as the average person in the developing world uses for a whole day’s washing, cleaning, cooking and drinking.

• Comparative costs: In Europe $11 billion is spent each year on ice cream; in USA and Europe, $17 billion is spent on pet food; in Europe $105 billion is spent annually on alcoholic drinks, ten times the amount required to ensure water, sanitation and hygiene for all.

• In the past 10 years diarrhoea has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.

• In China, India and Indonesia twice as many people are dying from diarrhoeal diseases as from HIV/AIDS.

• In 1998, 308,000 people died from war in Africa, but more than two million (six times as many) died of diarrhoeal disease.

• The population of the Kibeira slum in Nairobi, Kenya pay up to five times the price for a litre of water than the average American citizen.

• An estimated 25% of people in developing country cities use water vendors purchasing their water at significantly higher prices than piped water.

• Projections for 2025 indicate that the number of people living in water-stressed countries will increase to 3 billion – a six-fold increase. Today, 470 million people live in regions where severe shortages exist.

• The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal disease by one-third.

• Following the introduction of the Guatemalan Handwashing Initiative in 1998, there were 322,000 fewer cases of diarrhoea each year amongst the 1.5 million children under 5 nationwide in the country's lowest income groups.

• In Zambia, one in five children die before their fifth birthday. In contrast in the UK fewer than 1% of children die before they reach the age of five.

• A study in Karachi found that people living in areas without adequate sanitation who had no hygiene education spend six times more on medical treatments than those with sanitation facilities.

• Waterborne diseases (the consequence of a combination of lack of clean water supply and inadequate sanitation) cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year. And a cholera outbreak in Peru in the early 1990s cost the economy US$1 billion in lost tourism and agricultural exports in just 10 weeks.

• Improved water quality reduces childhood diarrhoea by 15-20% BUT better hygiene through handwashing and safe food handling reduces it by 35% AND safe disposal of children’s faeces leads to a reduction of nearly 40%.

• At any time, 1.5 billion people suffer from parasitic worm infections stemming from human excreta and solid wastes in the environment. Intestinal worms can be controlled through better sanitation, hygiene and water. These parasites can lead to malnutrition, anaemia and retarded growth, depending upon the severity of the infection.

• It is estimated that pneumonia, diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria, which account for 20% of global disease burden, receive less than 1% of total public and private funds devoted to health research.

• Ecological sanitation is one option being practised in some communities in China, Mexico, Vietnam, etc. Excreta contains valuable nutrients. We produce 4.56 kg nitrogen, 0.55 kg phosphorous, and 1.28 kg potassium per person per year from faeces and urine. This is enough to produce wheat and maize for one person every year.

• One gramme of faeces can contains:10,000,000 Viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs.

For more information, check http://www.wsscc.org/

Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council c/o WHO (CCW), 20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. Tel. +41 22 791 3544, fax +41 22 791 4847, e-mail: wsscc@who.ch

Sources

• 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: WaterAid
• 6, 25: WELL Technical Brief (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/)
• 16: Water for African Cities presentation, Stockholm Water Symposium, August 2001
• 12: Vision 21 – Water For People, March 2000, WSSCC
• 1, 2, 3, 4, 19: WHO/UNICEF/WSSCC Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 Report
• 17: WELL Planned Work studies 163 and 164.
• 20: Saad� et al (2001) The Story of a Successful Public-Private Partnership in Central America: Handwashing for Diarroheal Disease Prevention. BASICS, EHP, UNICEF, USAID and The World Bank
• 27: (Esrey and Andersson (1999), Environmental Sanitation from an Ecological Systems Approach. See: www.wsscc.org)
• 26: (10/90 Report on Health Research, 2000. Global Forum for Health Research)
• 18: (IHE Newsletter, January 2001)
• 28: (Advocating Sanitation - how, why and when? Sanitation Connection: http://www.sanicon.net/titles/topicintro.php3/topicId=1)

Loss of Labor

Those who are ill cannot work productively, but even among those who are well, tremendous time and energy are wasted in the daily search for water.

• In one village in Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa mothers walk for two to three hours a day to find a river or stagnant pond, and return to their homes carrying 25 kilograms(55 lbs.) of water in earthenware jugs on the heads.

• In some slums surrounding the cities of developing countries, families often have to spend 10% of their income to buy water for household needs.

Courier
 

Water and Farming
 
Agriculture accounts for 70% of total global fresh water use.

1/3 of today's harvest comes from 17% of the world's cropland that is irrigated. Irrigation thus greatly helps meet the challenge of feeding an ever-growing population.

Worldwatch Paper 62

Irrigation can also degrade the soil. Much irrigation water is salty, causing an increased need for fertilizers.

Beyond Oil

Shrinking inland seas are a dramatic consequence of large water withdrawals to meet irrigation and other water demands. An equally grave threat is the quiet loss of fish and other aquatic life from rivers and streams whose altered flow patterns can no longer sustain them.

Raising irrigation efficiencies worldwide by just 10% would save enough water to supply all global residential water uses.

Worldwatch Paper 62
 

Enough for survival enough for health

Two thirds of our bodies weight and nine tenths of its volume is water.

That is why water essential for life. People can survive for up to two months without food, but die within three days without water
 

A person needs about 5 litres of water each day for cooking and drinking. But the World Bank estimates that a further 25-45 litres are needed for each person to stay clean and healthy. In many places the family's water must be fetched each day by women or children.

In Kenya alone, it is estimated that 3 million women each spend an average of 3 hours a days on the single task to fetching water - that equals 9 million hours daily. Is There a Better Way?

• The most a woman can carry in comfort is 15 litres, each litre weighing one kilogram.

• If she carries only enough water for her family (husband, mother, five children) to survive each day, she would need to fetch about 40 litres.

• But to keep them all clean and healthy she would need to fetch 200 litres of water every day.

This is why the amount of water consumed depends largely on whether it has to be carried to the house.  

 

Type of Facility Approximate consumption per person in 10-litre buckets. No tap or standpipe 1.2

Meanwhile people in the industrialised world use

• 22 litres each time a toilet is flushed

• 150,000 litres to produce a ton of steel

• 750,000 litres to produce a ton of newsprint

Sources:

• Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, A Summary Report. 1986. Carrying Capacity. Inc., 1325 G Street, NW, Suite 1002, Washington, D.C. 20005.

• Courier, January 1985, a publication of UNESCO, 7 Place de Fentenoy, 75700 Paris.

• Decade Watch, International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, published quarterly by the United Nations Development Programme. Division of Information, One UN Plaza. New York, NY 10017.

• EPA Journal, Vol. 12 No. 7, September 1986 and Vol. 11. No. 7, September 1985, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Public Affairs, Washington. DC 20460.

• Is There a Better Way? June 1985, United Nations Development Program, Division of Information, New York, New York 10017.

• The New Internationalist, No. 103, September 1981, 175 Carlton St., Toronto. Ontario M5A 2K3; for subscription enquiries: P O Box 1143, Lewiston, NY 14092.

• The Real Cost, Richard North, 1986, Chatto and Windus Ltd., 40 William IV Street. London WC2N 4DF.

• State Government News, Vol. 29 No. 5, June 1986, The Council of State Governments. Iron Works Pike, P O Box 11910, Lexington, KY 40578.

• World Military & Social Expenditures 1986, Ruth Leger Sivard, World Priorities, Inc., Box 25140, Washington, DC 20007. Worldwatch Paper 62 Water: Rethinking Management in an Age of Scarcity, December 1984 and

• Worldwatch Paper 64 Investing In Children, June 1985, The Worldwatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036.

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