Water Facts
Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. More people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet. And as cities and slums grow at increasing rates, the situation worsens. Every day, lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life.
- 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people
- 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease
- The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns
- Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
- An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day
Children
Dirrahoea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined
Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease
Diarrheoa is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status
Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time
In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water
1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year
Environment
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.
More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas
The UN estimates that by 2025, forty-eight nations, with combined population of 2.8 billion, will face freshwater “stress” or “scarcity”.
Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater by far: about 70% of all freshwater withdrawals go to irrigated agriculture.
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