Over 1.1 billion people on the planet do not have access to safe drinking water. That is 1 in 6 of us.
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.
Today 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.
At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
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.
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, treating diarrhea consumes 12 percent of the health budget. On a typical day, more than half the hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from fecal-related disease.
An American taking a 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 of water every day.
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)
