Water, the staff of life and considered a basic human right, is the cause of a daily crisis faced by more than one billion of the world’s most underprivileged people. This crisis threatens life and puts large segments of people vulnerable to chronic disease, poverty and unsafe living conditions.
Water caused disease cause the most death of infants in under developed countries. Diarrhea causes over 1.8 million deaths of children each year. Access to safe water is the major reason in the survival of children under five years of age. Almost half of all people in these countries are suffering with health problems related to water. The yearly number of deaths from water related disease is over six times the total number of dead from violence or armed conflict.
Enough clean water is the foundation for all other community development. Sanitation and lack of water is an impediment to education for children across the world. This leads to hundreds of millions of lost school days each year. Safe water is necessary for economic growth. In some parts of the world, there is violent conflict every day over the supply, sources and shortage of enough water.
The lack of clean water causes cycles of disadvantage which affect millions of people with illnesses and lost education opportunities during childhood which leads to poverty in adulthood and these cycles continue for generations.
There are several organizations that are dedicated to providing clean water to some of these countries to help solve this massive problem. They do everything from shipping bottles of water to organizing trips of people to go and help dig wells.
It is believed that close to half of all people in developing countries are suffering from health problems caused by no or unsafe drinking water.
In developing nations, one-third of all deaths are children under the age of five, compared to less than 1 percent in developed nations. The leading cause of this death is the 5 billion cases of diarrhea suffered by children. Approximately 1.8 million of these children die each year as a direct result of chronic diarrhea. This averages to 4,900 deaths of children every day because of insufficient or unclean drinking water. I want to say this again because I want you to read it again – 4,900 babies die every day because of no clean drinking water!
This water crisis is a crisis of mainly the poor. Approximately two-thirds of people, who have no access to clean water, survive on less than two dollars a day and one-third live on less than one dollar a day. Some are poor because they lack water, while others lack water because they are poor. But the statistics prove a two-way relationship between water deprivation and poverty.
Water is essential for personal needs such as vegetable gardens, food preparations and laundry services. In most cases, local small businesses have no rights to the water they use and this makes the businesses vulnerable to larger economic as well as local politics for water usage.
The worse crisis in the world today, is to get water to the billions of people who so desperately need it.