Silent Emergency: Billions Without Clean Water, Sanitation

NEW YORK, New York, August 27, 2004 (ENS) - The world is on track to meet a United Nations target of supplying safe drinking water to all but 800 million of the world's people by 2015, UN agencies said Thursday. Presently, an estimated 1.1 billion people - roughly one in every six people - do not have clean water to drink.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) report that the global sanitation target will be missed by half a billion people - most of them in rural Africa and Asia - allowing waste and disease to spread, killing millions of children and leaving millions more on the brink of survival, the agencies predicted.

More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 percent of the world's population - do not have access to basic sanitation.

"Around the world millions of children are being born into a silent emergency of simple needs," says Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive director.

"The growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to basic services is killing around 4000 children every day and underlies many more of the 10 million child deaths each year. We have to act now to close this gap or the death toll will certainly rise," said Bellamy.

"Water and sanitation are among the most important determinants of public health. Wherever people achieve reliable access to safe drinking-water and adequate sanitation they have won a major battle against a wide range of diseases," says WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-wook.

During the monsoon season in Bangladesh there is plenty of water, but it may carry diseases. (Photo courtesy World Food Program)

WHO and UNICEF say the report measures progress at the halfway point between 1990 and 2015. It is the first in a series looking at progress in water and sanitation coverage, should be a wake-up call to all global leaders, Lee and Bellamy said. Every country still has work to do to eliminate disparities in basic services and the data shows clearly how that can be done before the Millennium Development Goal deadline of 2015.

The agencies warned that a global trend towards urbanization is marginalizing the rural poor and putting huge strain on basic services in cities. As a result, families living in rural villages and urban slums are being trapped in a cycle of ill health and poverty.

Children are always the first to suffer from the burden of disease caused by dirty water and poor hygiene, while the wider impact of unhygienic environments drags back economic progress and erodes good governance, the agencies said.

A refugee from Darfur, Sudan, 20 month old Abdul Kassem is in a therapeutic feeding center run by Medecins sans Frontieres-Holland in a camp in Chad. (Photo by Peter Smerdon courtesy WFP)

In the former Soviet Union, only 83 percent of people had access to adequate sanitation facilities. With economic and population pressures growing, these percentages could decrease, the report warns.

The drinking water picture is more hopeful. Over the past 12 years, WHO and UNICEF estimate that an additional 1.1 billion people have gained access to an improved source of drinking water - bringing global coverage rates up to 83 percent, from 77 percent in 1990.

Dr. Lee said, "To meet the 2015 targets, countries need to create the political will and resources to serve a billion new urban dwellers, and reduce by almost one billion the number of rural dwellers without access to adequate sanitation facilities. Otherwise we risk leaving millions, if not billions, out of the development process."

There are some encouraging signs, say Lee and Bellamy. Great gains in water and sanitation coverage have been made against considerable odds in many countries. "This progress came as a direct result of political prioritization and a drive to find locally effective solutions," they said.

"This report is important because it proves that significant improvements are possible in a short space of time, even in the poorest countries." said Bellamy. "By identifying trends now, and committing to course corrections, we have a real opportunity to ensure that by 2015 these basic essentials of life are available to all."