Start with one Kenya

In the US, a water crisis is a major news story. In many other parts of the world, it would be daily life. Every year more than 2 million people, mostly children, die from waterborne disease. Fifty percent of all the illness in the world is caused by unsafe water. Globally, unsafe water kills more people every year than violence, including war. Children are the worst affected because they don’t have the resilience to fight water borne illness. As if the numbers on death and disease weren’t sufficiently compelling, many people in developed nations are shocked when they begin to comprehend the vast number of people in the world who have no access to any water at all. Clean water is at the root of many challenges that face most of the world.  Some eye opening data points:

• 663 million people live without clean water  (That’s twice the US population!)
• Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
• 43% of those deaths are children under the age of 5.
• Access to clean water and basic sanitation can save 16,000 lives each week.
• Clean water helps keep kids in school, particularly girls.

According to the World Health Organization, safe water supplies, hygienic sanitation and good water management are fundamental to global health. Almost one tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by:

• increasing access to safe drinking water;
• improving sanitation and hygiene; and
• improving water management to reduce risks of water-borne infectious diseases.