Water and health
 Diarrhoeal diseases
-
Every day, diarrhoeal diseases cause some 6,000 deaths,
mostly among children under five.
- In 2001, 1.96 million people
died from infectious diarrhoeas; 1.3 million were
children under five.
- Between
1,085,000 and 2,187,000 deaths due to diarrhoeal
diseases can be attributed to the 'water, sanitation and
hygiene' risk factor, 90 percent of them among children
under five.
- With simple hygiene
measures such as washing hands after using the toilet or
before preparing food, most of these deaths are
preventable.
Malaria
- Over 1 million
people die from malaria every
year.
- About 90 percent of the
annual global rate of deaths from malaria occur in
Africa south of the Sahara.
-
Malaria causes at least 300 million cases of acute
illness each year.
- The disease
costs Africa more than US$12 million annually and slows
economic growth in African countries by 1.3 percent a
year.
- Sleeping under mosquito
nets would be one simple but effective way to prevent
many cases of malaria, especially for children under
five.
Schistosomiasis
(bilharziasis)
- More than 200
million people worldwide are infected by
schistosomiasis.
- 88 million
children under fifteen years are infected each year with
schistosomes.
- 80 percent of
transmission takes place in Africa south of the
Sahara.
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Water and sanitation
1 billion people) lack access to improved water
supply
2.4 billion people lack access to improved
sanitation
Access to piped water through household
connections
- Latin America and the
Caribbean: 66%
- Asia: 49%
- Africa: 24%
Access to sanitation linked to a sewage
system:
- Latin America and the
Caribbean: 66%
- Asia: 18%
- Africa: 13%
To achieve the above
targets:
- an additional 1.5
billion people will require access to some form of
improved water supply by 2015, that is an additional 100
million people each year (274,000/day) until 2015;
- access to drinking water
globally means providing services for about 1.9 billion
people are required to gain access to improved
sanitation, that is an additional 125 million people
each year (342,000/day) until 2015;
- in urban areas, more than 1
billion additional people will need access to both water
supply and sanitation over the next fifteen years in
order to meet the targets
Definitions:
Malaria:
transmitted by mosquitoes, malaria is characterized by
extreme exhaustion associated with paroxysms of high
fever.
Schistosomiasis: a disease caused
by a worm that is often found in irrigation ditches and
still river water. |
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