Dirty
Water Kills 4,000 Children A Day
By Thalif Deen
30 September, 2006
Inter Press
Service
UNITED NATIONS, Sep
28 (IPS) - The statistics are mind-boggling: of the more than
six billion people in the world today, over one billion have no access
to improved drinking water -- a basic necessity for human life -- and
about 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation.
And according to the U.N.
children's agency UNICEF, polluted water and lack of basic sanitation
claim the lives of over 1.5 million children every year, mostly from
water-borne diseases.
"Despite commendable
progress," says UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman, "an
estimated 425 million children under 18 still do not have access to
an improved water supply, and over 980 million do not have access to
adequate sanitation."
She said those who die are
by no means the only children affected. "Many millions more have
their development disrupted and their health undermined by diarrhoeal
or water-related diseases."
In a 33-page report titled
"Progress for Children: a Report Card on Water and Sanitation"
released Thursday, UNICEF says these "tragic statistics" underscore
the need for the world to meet its commitment to one of eight Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs): to halve by 2015 the proportion of people
without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The other goals include a
50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary
education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality
by two-thirds; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
and ensuring environmental sustainability. A summit meeting of 189 world
leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the
year 2015.
Overall, the statistical
snapshot of the world's progress towards MDG targets for water and sanitation
"offers a mixed message", UNICEF warns.
"We cannot be satisfied
with current performance," Veneman said. "And we cannot afford
to lose the opportunity presented by the Millennium Agenda to transform
the lives of the most vulnerable children."
She said the international
community lacked both sufficient resources and resolve to meet the U.N.
goals -- "and it is hard to think of a more potent reason to redouble
our efforts than the thought of more than 1.5 million children every
year who will not live to see their fifth birthday," Veneman added.
According to estimates by
UNICEF and the World Health Organisation, developing nations need at
least 11.3 billion dollars a year to meet low-cost basic levels of service
for both drinking water and sanitation by the year 2015. And more than
80 percent of the total resources will be needed in Asia and Africa.
In a detailed breakdown of
numbers, UNICEF said that unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability
of water for hygiene and lack of access to sanitation together contribute
to about 88 percent of deaths from diarrhoeal disease, or more than
1.5 million of the 1.9 million children under five who perish from diarrhoea
each year.
This amounts to 18 percent
of all under-five deaths and means that more than 4,000 children are
dying every day as a result of diarrhoeal diseases.
On a more positive note,
UNICEF points out that four developing regions -- East Asia/Pacific,
Middle East/North Africa, South Asia and Latin America/Caribbean --
are on track to meet their MDG targets for safe water.
But current progress rates
in sub-Saharan Africa and in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) "will leave those regions short".
"The remarkable progress
in South Asia and Latin America/Caribbean has placed them on the verge
of achieving their drinking-water goals 10 years early," UNICEF
said.
In both regions, the number
of people without access shrank between 1990 and 2004 -- in South Asia
from 326 million to 222 million, and in Latin America/Caribbean from
74 million to 50 million.
Still unsafe levels of arsenic
have been found in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. "The
problem is greatest in Bangladesh, where it was discovered that more
than 30 percent of the tube wells sunk in recent decades are contaminated
with arsenic above the nationally recommended level," the report
says.
The UNICEF report singles
out sub-Saharan Africa -- which represents about 11 percent of the world
population -- where almost a third of all people live without access
to safe drinking water.
Meanwhile, three regions,
namely East Asia/Pacific, Middle East/North Africa and Latin America/Caribbean
are also on track to meet their MDG targets on basic sanitation.
But the largest gains have
been registered in South Asia, where access to improved sanitation facilities
more than doubled, from 17 percent in 1990 to 37 percent in 2004, and
in East Asia/Pacific, from 30 percent to 51 percent.
According to UNICEF, these
improvements were primarily driven by gains made in two of the world's
most populous nations: India and China. But still low levels of sanitation
remain one of Asia's biggest public health threats.
The UNICEF report, however,
gives a clean bill of health for the world's industrialised nations,
which have reached nearly universal levels of coverage for both water
and sanitation.
In many of the European countries
with transitional economies, water and sanitation infrastructure still
needs to be developed or improved. "And all industrialised countries
face a substantial challenge in financing the replacement of decaying
and leaking infrastructure, which is long overdue for renovation in
many cases."
Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter
Press Service
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