This gravity flow scheme reaches 1256 people in Tigray, Ethiopia.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Irby

Statistics

WaterAid's key facts and statistics

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population.

• 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population.

• 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)

• The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%. (British Medical Journal)

• The integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)

• Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis.

• 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. 

• Water and sanitation infrastructure helps people take the first essential step out of the cycle of poverty and disease. In the UK the expansion of sanitation infrastructure in the 1880s contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following four decades.

Water in the world

• 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater. If the world's water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable.

• While the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold. Within the next fifty years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50%. (World Water Council)

Water-related diseases

• At any given time, almost half the population of the developing world is suffering from one or more of the main diseases associated with inadequate provision of water and sanitation.

• At any one time, half of the developing world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-related diseases. (UN)

• Around 90% of incidences of water-related diseases are due to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene and is mostly concentrated on children in developing countries. (WHO)

• Intestinal worms infect about 10% of the population of the developing world. Intestinal parasitic infections can lead to malnutrition, anaemia and stunted growth. (WHO)

• One gram of human faeces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. (UNICEF)

Water use

• The average European uses 200 litres of water every day. North Americans use 400 litres.

• The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. This is the same amount used in the average flush of a UK toilet. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))

• On current trends over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water  than they do now. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

• Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world's water consumption. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

• The average amount of water needed to produce one kilogramme of potatoes is 1000 litres, wheat is 1450 litres and rice is 3450 litres. (Gleick 2001)

Education and livelihoods

• 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases.

• 11% more girls attend school when sanitation is available. (DFID)

• 40 billion working hours are spent carrying water each year in Africa. (Cosgrove and Rijsberman 1998)

• Households in rural Africa spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, and it is generally women who are burdened with the task. (DFID)

Water, sanitation and the Millennium Development Goals

• An extra US$10 billion each year is needed to reach the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation - about half of what rich countries spend on mineral water.

• To reach the water target will require the provision of services to an additional 300,000 people a day over the next decade, requiring current efforts to be stepped up by almost one third.

• To reach the sanitation target means providing services to an additional 450,000 people a day until 2015. This calls for almost a doubling of the current efforts. On current trends, the world will miss the sanitation target by more than half a billion people.

Financing the sector

• In real terms, aid levels for water and sanitation are lower than in 1997, a marked contrast to education or health, where aid commitments doubled over the same period. 

• The UK Department for International Development (DFID) reported average water spending of around $30m in 2005/06 - less than 1% of its bilateral aid budget. (DFID)

• India spends eight times more on military budgets than on water and sanitation. Pakistan spends 47 times more. Diarrhoea claims some 450,000 lives every year in India - more than in any other country - and 118,000 in Pakistan.
  

Unless otherwise stated, figures were taken from the Human Development report 2006.

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