Clean Water
The world has made progress in improving access to clean water, but lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation still claims the lives of 1.5 million children every year. A new report by UNICEF claims more than 1.2 billion people have gained access to safe water since 1990.
Between 1990 and 2004, global coverage of safe drinking water rose from 78 percent to 83 percent, with Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia at the forefront. Sub-Saharan Africa remains a major area of concern.
Some 1.2 billion people have also gained access to basic sanitation since 1990, with global coverage rising from 49 percent to 59 percent. Improving sanitation is crucial to reducing the risk of outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and dysentery. In South Asia, access to improved sanitation more than doubled between 1990 and 2004. In East Asia and the Pacific, the proportion of people with basic sanitation rose from 30 percent to more than 50 percent.
An estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still do not have access to an improved water supply and over 980 million do not have access to adequate sanitation.
September 29, 2006 6:45 AM | Category: Water