Diarrhea: A Water-Related Disease

Water, the basic human right and the basis of life, is a matter of daily crisis which is faced by over one billion of the world’s most underprivileged people.

Diseases that relate to water are the single largest culprit of infant death in developing countries - diarrhea itself causes 1.8 million child deaths each year – and access to safe water is the most important factor in the survival of children under the age of five.  Nearly half of all people in developing countries are suffering from water-related health problems.  The annual number of deaths from water-related disease is six times greater than the number of deaths from armed violence.

Sufficient clean water is foundational for all other community development.  Lack of water and sanitation is an obstacle to education for children across the world, leading to hundreds of millions of lost school days each year.Safe water is vital in economic development.  In many nations, shortage of water is a cause of violent conflict.

Lack of access to clean water perpetuates cycles of disadvantage which affect millions of people, with illnesses and lost educational opportunities during childhood leading to poverty in adulthood.

There are many organizations that are dedicated to bring clean water to some of these under developed countries to help solve this massive problem.  They do anything from shipping bottles of water to organizing trips of people to go and help dig wells.

Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat than violent conflict.  At any given time, close to half of all people in developing countries are suffering from health problems caused by unsafe water.

One-third of all deaths in developing nations are children under the age of five, compared to less than 1% in developed nations.The major cause?  The 5 billion cases of diarrhea suffered by children in underprivileged countries, some 1.8 million of these children die each year as a direct result of chronic diarrhea – that’s 4,900 every day.

The water crisis is, above all, a crisis of poor.Nearly about two-thirds of people who lack access to clean water spend their life on an income of less than two dollars per day and one-third live on less than one dollar per day.  Some might lack water because they are poor, others might be poor because they lack water, but the statistics show a two-way relationship between poverty and water deprivation.

Water is essential for personal enterprises such as vegetable gardens, food preparations and laundry services.In many cases, these tiny local businesses have no formal right to the water they use and are vulnerable to larger economic and political players for their water usage.