Two Billion People Worldwide Lack Access To Clean Water.
(IPS) – More than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Although significant progress to ensure access to drinking water has been achieved, there is still a long way to go to ensure its quality—deemed free from pollutants and safe for drinking.
“Every day, 800 children under the age of five die from waterborne diseases like diarrhoea.
In many countries, open defecation due to the lack of in-house toilets poses a significant challenge.
While the global drop in open defecation from 20 to 12 percent between 2000 and 2015 is a welcome fact, the rate of decline, at just .7 percent every year, puts pressure on governments to do more.
Still, some countries like Ethiopia have combatted the issue of open defecation successfully.
Critical building blocks like stronger policies at the government levels and dutiful allocation of funds can go a long way,” Wijesekera said.
These issues—from access to safe drinking water to sanitation supplies—mostly affect the poorest families.
For example, Angola, which has performed better than other sub-Saharan African countries and achieved overall basic access to water for its citizens, still shows a gap of 40 percent between people who live in urban and rural areas.