International Year of Water 2003

Water facts

• A child dies every fifteen seconds from a disease caused by lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
  
• Around four million people die every year from water-related diseases.
  
• More than a billion people around the world lack a basic water supply.
  
• 2.4 billion people in the world - about two fifths of the world's population do not have access to adequate sanitation.
  
• Some 6,000 children die every day from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
  
• Women in Africa and Asia walk an average distance of 6km a day to collect water.
  
• 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 a day.
  
• In the past ten years diarrhoea has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.
  
• The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal disease by one third.
  
• At any time, 1.5 billion people suffer from parasitic worm infections stemming from human excreta and solid wastes in the environment.
  
• In Africa, 30 percent of the rural water supplies are not functioning at any one time. In Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, the numbers are respectively 17 percent and 4 percent.
  
• Health is one of the most important reasons for investing in Water, Sanitation and hygiene. Experience shows that the provision of Water and Sanitation technology alone (without changes in hygiene behaviour through health education) will usually achieve little health improvement in the longer term.
  
• At any given moment almost half the developing world's population are sick from unsafe water and sanitation
  
• Hygiene related-illness cost developing countries five billion working days per year
  
• Half of the world's developing hospital beds are occupied by victims of unsafe water and sanitation
  
• Malaria is one of the most critical disease problems of today in Africa-and elsewhere. Approximately 7000 people die every day from Malaria. Improved sanitation and vector control can break this trend.