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Water FACTS

  • 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease. (11)
  • 43% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea. (11)
  • 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 – 14. (11)
  • 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world. (11)
  • 884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people. (5)
  • The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. (1)
  • At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease. (1)
  • 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. (12)
  • An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day. (1)
  • About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. More than two thirds of people without an improved water source live on less than $2 a day. (1)
  • Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city. (1)
  • Without food a person can live for weeks, but without water you can expect to live only a few days. (4)
  • The daily requirement for sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs, as well as for assuring survival, is about 13.2 gallons per person. (3)
  • Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring. (10)
References 1. 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. 2. Number estimated from statistics in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report. 3. Asian Development Bank web site. 2009. 4. The Discovery Channel web site. 2009. 5. UNICEF/WHO. 2008. Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation. 6. UN. 2007. International Year of Sanitation Global Launch 7. UN Water. 2008. Gender, Water and Sanitation: A Policy Brief. 8. UN Water. 2008. Tackling a Global Crisis: International Year of Sanitation 2008 9. Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). 2008. A Guide to Investigating One of the Biggest Scandals of the Last 50 Years. 10. Rajesh Shah of Blue Planet Run Foundation. http://www.bhopal.net/dowunioncarbide/archives/2006/07/worldwide_race.html 11. World Health Organization. 2008. Safer Water, Better Health: Costs, benefits, and sustainability of interventions to protect and promote health. 12. World Health Organization Fact Sheet Health in Water Resources Development.