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Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Introduction:

Young children are more vulnerable than any other age group to the ill effects of unsafe water, poor sanitation and lack of hygiene. UNICEF is committed to ensuring that all children gain access to clean water and improved sanitation and hygiene by simple, affordable and achievable interventions.
WASH Key data:

  • As of 2006, 87 per cent of the global population or approximately 5.7 billion people worldwide are using safe drinking water with improved sources. However, nearly 900 million people still do not have access to improved water sources.
  • As of 2006, 2.5 billion people or 38 per cent of the world’s population, do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. Almost 1.8 billion of them - 70 per cent - live in Asia.
  • If current trends continue the total population without improved sanitation in 2015 will have decreased only slightly since 1990 to 2.4 billion.
  • At current rate the world will miss the MDG sanitation target by over 700 million people. To meet the target, at least 173 million people on average per year will need to begin using improved sanitation facilities.
  • As of 2006, 18 per cent of the world’s population or 1.2 billion people still practice open defecation, the riskiest sanitation practice of all. However, only 13 per cent of them live in urban areas.
  • Nearly one third of the world’s rural population practices open defecation. In Southern Asia the figure is a remarkable 63 per cent.
  • Of the approximately 120 million children born in the developing world each year, half live in households without access to improved sanitation facilities and one fifth in households without improved drinking-water sources comprising their survival and development.
  • Unsafe drinking water and a lack of improved sanitation and hygiene contribute to about 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths. More than 5,000 children under five are dying every day as a result of diarrhoeal diseases.
  • As of 2006, only 31 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa use improved sanitation, up only 5 percentage points since 1990.
  • As of 2006, at least two thirds of the population in 34 countries do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. Only eight of these countries are outside sub-Saharan Africa.
  • By 2006, the world’s urban sanitation coverage has risen to 79 per cent, while rural coverage has reached 45 per cent
  • By 2006, the world’s population was almost equally divided between urban and rural dwellers. However, more than 7 out of 10 people, without improved sanitation, are rural inhabitants.
  • The largest disparity between urban and rural sanitation coverage is found in Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Southern Asia. The urban-rural sanitation disparity is smallest in Eastern Asia, but even then there it shows a 15 percentage-point difference.
  • Remarkable progress in South Asia has placed it on the verge of achieving the drinking-water goals ten years early. Eastern Asia has made notable progress with a 20 per cent gain in its drinking water coverage which represents 416 million people who have gained access to improved water sources since 1990.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa contains the largest population without access to improved water sources, but figures have dropped for this region from a high of 51 per cent in 1990 to 42 per cent in 2006.
  • The use of improved sanitation facilities is substantially lower among the poor than the rich. An analysis among 38 developing countries shows that the poorest 20 per cent of the population has only one third the access to improved sanitation as the richest quintile.
  • 717 million rural inhabitants have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990.
  • 1.6 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water sources since 1990; 1 billion of them are using piped water connections.
  • Improved drinking water coverage in sub-Saharan Africa is still considerably lower than in other regions. Nevertheless, it has increased from 49 per cent in 1990 to 58 per cent in 2006, which means that an additional 207 million Africans are now using safe drinking water.
  • Oceania is the only developing region that has failed to lower use of unimproved drinking water sources since 1990. Half of the 9.2 million people in that region continue to use unimproved sources.
  • Women are twice more likely than men to go and fetch drinking water. Children (boys and girls) play a relatively small role in water collection (only 11 per cent of households report that children are the main water haulers.)
  • Studies have found that if the total time taken per round trip to collect water exceeds 30 minutes, people tend to collect less water, thus compromising their basic drinking water needs.
  • Globally, more than 125 million children under five years of age live in households without access to an improved drinking-water source, and more than 280 million children under five live in households without access to improved sanitation facilities.

Updated - July 2008


 

 

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