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- 2.6
billion people in the world do not have access to adequate
sanitation, this is roughly two fifths of the world's population.
- 1.8
million children die every year as a result of diseases
caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around
5000 deaths a day.
- The
integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and
hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by
an average of 65%. (WHO)
- Water-related
disease is the second biggest killer of
children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like
tuberculosis.
- The weight of
water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly
20kg, the same as the average UK airport luggage
allowance.
- Water and
sanitation infrastructure helps people take the first
essential step out of the cycle of poverty and disease. In
the UK the expansion of sanitation infrastructure in the 1880s
contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following
four decades.
- Of all water on earth, 97.5% is salt water, and of the remaining
2.5% fresh water, some 70% is frozen in the polar icecaps. The
other 30% is mostly present as soil moisture or lies in
underground aquifers. In the end, less than 1% of the world's
fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily
accessible for direct human uses. It is found in lakes, rivers,
reservoirs and in underground sources shallow enough to be tapped
at affordable cost
- Around 90%
of incidences of water-related diseases are due to unsafe water
supply, sanitation and hygiene and is mostly concentrated on children
in developing countries. (WHO)
- Intestinal worms
infect about 10% of the population of the developing
world. Intestinal parasitic infections can lead to malnutrition,
anaemia and stunted growth. (WHO)
- One gram
of human faeces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000
bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. (UNICEF)
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