Statistics

Since it was established, WaterAid has reached 13.44 million people with safe water.

Credit: Charlie Bibby/FT

• A global crisis
• What has WaterAid done?
• Sanitation
• Hygiene
• Water
• Education and livelihoods
• Millennium Development Goals
• Financing the sector
• Water and sanitation in history

A global crisis

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF)
• 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF)
• 1.4 million children die every year from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation - 4,000 child deaths a day or one child every 20 seconds. This equates to 160 infant school classrooms lost every single day to an entirely preventable public health crisis. (WHO/WaterAid)

What has WaterAid done?

• We have reached 14.38 million people with safe water since 1981 and 9.4 million people with sanitation since 2004.
• Last year WaterAid reached 940,000 people with safe water and 1.24 million people with sanitation.

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Sanitation

• 7 out of 10 people without sanitation live in rural areas. (WHO/UNICEF)
• Diarrhoea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. (WHO)
• Children living in households with no toilet are twice as likely to get diarrhoea as those with a toilet. (WEDC)
• Every year, around 60 million children in the developing world are born into households without access to sanitation. (UN Water)
• One gram of human faeces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. (UNICEF)
• At any one time half the hospital beds in developing countries are filled with people suffering from diarrhoea. (UNDP)

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Hygiene

• Hand-washing with soap at critical times can reduce the incidence of diarrhoea by up to 47%. (UN Water)
• The integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)

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Water

• 8 out of 10 people without safe water live in rural areas. (WHO/UNICEF)
• The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 20kg, the same as the average UK airport luggage allowance. (HDR)
• The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (WSSCC)
• The average European uses 200 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. North Americans use 400 litres. (HDR)
• On current trends over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water than they do now. (UNEP)
• Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world's water consumption. (UNEP)
• 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater. If the world's water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable. (HDR)

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Education and livelihoods

Kenedy Gondwe's family have been able to earn an income from growing maize since they gained access to clean water.

Credit: WaterAid/Layton Thompson

• For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, $8 is returned in increased productivity. (UNDP)
• Lack of safe water and sanitation costs sub-Saharan Africa around 5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year. (UNDP)
• 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases.
• 11% more girls attend school when sanitation is available. (UK DFID)

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Millennium Development Goals

• The world is on track to meet or even exceed the MDG for safe drinking water – to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015. However, even though we are on-track globally, 884 million people are still without access. (WHO/UNICEF) 
• The world is seriously off-track to meet the sanitation MDG target – to halve the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015. If current rates of progress continue, the global sanitation goal will be met 30 years too late. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the sanitation target in that region is not due to be met for another 200 years. (WHO/UNICEF) 
• Nearly half the people who gained access to water between 1990 and 2008 live in India and China. (WHO/UNICEF)

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Financing the sector

• Over the past 10 years, aid to health and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased by nearly 500%, while aid to water and sanitation has increased by only 79%. (OECD)

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Water and sanitation in history 

• South Korea made huge investments in water and sanitation during the 1960s, when its per capita income was the same as Ghana's, and during that decade, under-five mortality more than halved, while the number of medical staff stayed virtually the same. (WaterAid)
• In the UK the expansion of water and sanitation infrastructure in the 1880s contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following four decades. (HDR, 2006)

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Abbreviations used
DFID – UK Department for International Development
HDR - UN Human Development Report 
OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
UNDP – United Nations Development Programme
UNEP – United National Environment Programme
UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund
WEDC – Water Engineering Department, University of Loughborough
WHO – World Health Organization
WSSCC – Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council

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