Government failure to tackle global child mortality

7 July 2008

Lack of sanitation kills millions of children every year.

Credit: WaterAid / Kate Eshelby

Every year 9.7 million children die before reaching their fifth birthday. This report asserts that improved sanitation could bring the single greatest reduction in these child deaths. 

Read the report, Tacking the silent killer: The case for sanitation ( PDF 1Mb) 

WaterAid's report reveals that the current statistics on child mortality may be underestimating how many child deaths are attributable to poor sanitation. According to the report inadequate sanitation may be the biggest killer of children under the age of five, yet no governments are prioritising the issue, instead sanitation is the most neglected of all the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) sectors.

The report, released at the G8 Hokkaido summit in Japan, explores how the sanitation sector is being chronically and institutionally neglected by donors and developing country governments alike, resulting in as many as 2.4 million easily preventable child deaths a year; double the number of people killed worldwide in road traffic accidents.

The Lancet's Senior Editor, Doctor Rhona MacDonald welcomes the report:

"WaterAid's report shows a scandalous neglect by the International Community. Investing time, attention and resources in sanitation has the potential to save millions of lives, especially those of children, but instead, by neglecting sanitation, children are needlessly dying and almost all other areas of human health and development are hampered.

"We need this report to stir up public pressure and demand access to improved sanitation for the 40% of the world's population - that's over 2.5 billion people - who lack even the most basic sanitation. As a health professional I'm well aware of the importance of sanitation, and I'll be looking to the Hokkaido G8 summit to change the current trend of neglect by delivering, and committing to an action plan on sanitation for the world's poorest people."

Professor Sandy Cairncross, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:

"WaterAid's report throws much needed light on a sector that is largely neglected. It is plain to see both historically and medically that investing in hygiene and sanitation offers the greatest public health returns of any development intervention. Yet no-one is championing the cause, and this chronic neglect is holding up other important areas of development. At the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine we welcome this report and urgently call for more research into the effects of poor sanitation."

The sanitation sector is in crisis, 40% of the world's population lack access to even basic sanitation. In 2002, an MDG target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to sanitation was agreed by the UN for achievement by 2015. At the current rate of 'progress' this global target will not be met, and in sub-Saharan Africa it will not be reached until 2076, 61 years late. Average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is below 40! 

The latest UNICEF report puts the two biggest killers of children as; respiratory diseases (1.8 million child deaths per year) and diarrhoeal diseases (1.6 million child deaths per year), malnutrition is also stated as an underlying cause in five million deaths. WaterAid's report demonstrates the role of poor sanitation across these diseases. Further evidence explains how low-cost, simple improvements to national sanitation services could save up to 2.4 million children's lives each year.  

Oliver Cumming, WaterAid policy officer:

"The International Development Community must respond to the development needs of the poor. How can governments overlook an issue that contributes to the deaths of millions and millions of children every year. The cold hard fact is that poor sanitation kills more children than HIV/Aids, Malaria and Measles combined yet it remains neglected. Most donor and aid-receiving governments don't even know how much they're spending on the sector.

"WaterAid is not calling for sanitation to be championed above or at the cost of other areas of development, we are simply asking that the sector is met with a level of priority and investment proportionate to the scale of the crisis.

"Investment in sanitation will bring massive gains to other areas of development too; more girls in school, less money spent on treating diarrhoeal diseases, more resources in hospitals to deal with other health issues. The list goes on… A failure to respond by the world's richest nations as they gather in Japan this week would be scandalously negligent."

WaterAid looks to world leaders to commit to an international development programme of action that responds to the scale of the child mortality crisis - not just the issues that are getting the most press, or have the most celebrity endorsements, but the issues that are killing the most children and are most easily rectified.

ENDS

The report is also available in French: Lutter contre le tueur silencieux ( PDF 1.5 Mb)

For interviews in Japan please call Charlotte Godber +81 (0)90 5323 3192/2028 or email charlottegodber@wateraid.org

For UK interviews call Nick Edmans on +44(0)20 7793 4925 or email nickedmans@wateraid.org.

For pictures call Jessica Crombie on +44 (0)20 7793 4987 or email jessicacrombie@wateraid.org.

For video footage call Beth Jepson on +44 (0)20 7793 4796 or email bethjepson@wateraid.org.

Notes to Editor:

WaterAid is an international charity. Our mission is to overcome poverty by enabling the world's poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is Britain's national school of public health and a leading postgraduate institution in Europe for public health and tropical medicine.

The Lancet is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals of its kind, publishing the best medical science in the world with a zeal to counter the forces that undermine the values of medicine, be they political, social, or commercial. The Lancet is an independent and authoritative voice in global medicine with a commitment to international health ensuring that research and analysis from all regions of the world is widely covered.