EndWaterPoverty.org provides the following facts and statistics about water poverty:
- 884 million people don’t have clean water and 40% of the world’s population suffer without a safe toilet, that’s 2.5 billion people.
- This crisis kills many and dramatically affecting life in developing countries.
- Preventable illnesses spread by the crisis heavily overburden health systems. More than half of hospital beds in Sub Saharan Africa are occupied by patients suffering from sanitation and water related diseases.
- 4000 children die from these diseases every day – they’re the biggest killer of young children, killing over five times more than HIV/AIDS and twice as many as malaria.
- With children too ill to go to classes, education is suffering. Young girls simply don’t attend as there aren’t toilets at school, or they aren’t safe and private. Other girls spend hours of their day walking to fetch water or caring for ill siblings and have no time for an education at all.
Eradicating water poverty may not require years and years of charity. Simply building and repairing the infrastructure that cleans water and delivers it can eradicate water poverty in the entire communities in which the infrastructure is present.
-Shereen Alibhai
SOURCE: Millions of Mouths
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