Why is improving access to drinking water and sanitation so crucial?
Download audio file (mp3) Safe drinking water, sanitation and good hygiene are so obviously essential and fundamental to health, survival, growth and development that we often forget that we need to pay attention to these. When we don’t ensure that the world’s people have access to water and sanitation, it is the poor in general who suffer – both health-wise and economically – and it is the children who die. Last year, we estimate, 1.6 million children under age 5 around the world died from the consequences of unsafe water and inadequate hygiene. Over 1.1 billion people do not use drinking water from improved sources, while 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Of these 2.6 billion people, 2 billion of them live in rural areas, while 600 million live in newly developing areas of large cities. Achieving the drinking water and sanitation target poses twin challenges: keeping pace with rapid urbanization, and getting water and sanitation to the huge numbers of hard-to-reach rural d
Related Questions
- What practical solutions/strategies does Reinventing Water and Wastewater Systems present for improving water sanitation?
- What practical solutions/strategies does Reinventing Water and Wastewater Systems present for improving water sanitation?
- Is there a global water crisis and do people lack drinking water and sanitation?
- What does sustainable access to safe drinking water & basic sanitation mean?
- What does sustainable access to safe drinking water & basic sanitation mean?
- Why is improving access to drinking water and sanitation so crucial?
