WaterAid: living well

Life and death

The results are deadly. Each year 2.2 million people, most of them children, die from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Even if not fatal, water related diseases have an enormous effect on health and wellbeing. Millions of working days are lost each year through illness, children are prevented from attending school, development in later life may be affected, and precious income is spent on medicines and health care. A recent study in Karachi, Pakistan, found that poor people living in areas without sanitation or hygiene education spend six times more on medical care than people living in areas with sanitation, who had a basic knowledge of household hygiene.1 The cost of lack of access to fresh water and sanitation is crippling the economies of some of the poorest countries in the world.

Prevention is best

It is clear that water related diseases and lack of access to fresh water, sanitation, and hygiene education are linked. Preventive measures should tackle all three.

Research over the past 10 years shows that improved water …