Drinking Water In Third World Countries

According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, “783 million people, or 11 per cent of the global population, remain without access to an improved source of drinking water. Such sources include household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs and rainwater collections.” (United Nations, 2012) The United Nations Water Conference in 1977 along with a few other conferences, addressed helping approximately “1.3 billion people in developing countries gain access to safe drinking water.” (United Nations, 2012) While there is progress being made, we see that various regions without clean drinking water. Reports show, “In four of nine developing regions, 90 per cent or more of the population now uses an improved drinking water source. In contrast, coverage remains very low in Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa, neither of which is on track to meet the MDG drinking water target by 2015. Over 40 per cent of all people without improved drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa.” (United Nations, 2012) It is shown that rural areas still lack drinkable water as opposed to urban areas. Consistent improvement has been made to supply populated areas with a reliable source of drinking water. However, research shows, “Coverage with improved drinking water sources for rural populations is still lagging. In 2010, 96 per cent of the urban population used an

Main Point: Third world countries lack accessibility to clean water exposing them to disease and harmful toxins that result in 2.4 million deaths annually (Bartram, 2010).

Unclean water is a growing phenomenon that is immensely occurring in Latin America. Water is an important necessity in life. There are over 70 million people who have no access to clean water. Many families in Latin America cannot afford to send their children to school, so the children drop out of school to help work at the home. Many of the children who stay home to work walk for hours to get to the nearest water source, and most of the time, the water is unclean and not safe to drink. The unclean water is the only water accessible to families in Latin America. With the unclean water available, sanitation was not. It is very rare to find any form of sanitized water in most households in Latin America. Over 100 million people are not

“Water, the stuff of life and a basic human right, is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by countless millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.” As stated by the UN, every 15 seconds a child dies of water related diseases. Globally most of us don’t have clean water but in Africa clean water is very scarce. As stated by the Guardian, half of the worlds hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related diseases. Today, around 2 million children in Africa die every year because of water related diseases. Infants and young children are especially susceptible to diseases because their immune systems are experiencing everything for the first time.

One of Jon Stewart's recent guests on The Daily Show wasn't laughing. Robert Glennon, a professor of law and public policy at The University of Arizona and the author of Unquenchable, used his moment on national television to stress the severity of the global water crisis. Although it is difficult for many of us living in the United States, Canada, and the UK to imagine fresh water as a finite resource, the water crisis is already a stark reality for people living in developing nations. Did you know that taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day? Currently, more than 3.5 million people die each year from water related diseases and young children account for 88% of these

1,300 million people in this world do not have access to drinking water – as a result, 80% of illnesses are caused by contaminated drinking water.

Efforts to improve the coverage and access to potable water supply and sanitation services have been greatly intensified in the past few decades. Yet, the situation has not changed substantially in the Sub-Saharan countries Access to water supply in the region increased only from 48% in 1990 to 64% in 2012 (WHO and UNICEF, 2014). The factors that contribute to the still insufficient coverage of Water supply, Sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are, among others, population growth, climate change (Howard et at., 2010), high rate of non-functional schemes (Harvey, 2008), and the lack of cost recovery systems or its ineffectiveness (Harvey, 2007).

In third-world countries, water and sanitation facilities are often scarce or unreliable. Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases such as chorea, dirrhoea, hepatitis, typhoid and polio. Each day 2000 children die from diarrhoea caused by contaminated water an inadequate sanitation and hygiene and overall around 842000 people are estimated to die each year. These diseases have the insidious effect of reducing people’s ability to access education and earn income – 272 million school days are lost each year to water-related diseases.

Water is the source of all life it is part of the plant‘s ingredients to make glucose and helps all animal and human get hydrated. Water help us stay alive but it also could kill us if the water isn’t fresh or clean. In the United State we have the technology to help us filter and clean water to a molecular level. While we have the technology and the resource to help us get clean water there are parts of the world that don’t and they need our help. These countries that don’t have the resource have to look for water but the water in the areas are contaminated and are not drinkable. They must dig to find water from the ground that is fresh and clean but they also have to build the wells that take time, resources, and money. These counties need

Having access to safe drinking water has many benefits, it helps in education, improves Health, and sickness is reduced, clean water also leads to food security, families can grow their own crops to feed them self. “Access to water can break the cycle of poverty” (the water project, n.d.)

use that money. According to Water.org, there are 358 million people without any access to water in

"Water is an essential element in our daily lives, but for North Americans, water service is a convenience that we too often take for granted until a serious issue occurs,” (Waterworld, 2014). There is more than 1 billion people who lack adequate access to clean drinking water and at least estimated there are over 400 million that are children. "Because unclean water yields illness, roughly 443 million school days are missed every year." (Goodnet, 07 Oct, 2014). Providing clean water to the billons of people who don’t have access to clean water is important because it help maintain human health. “Clean water has become one of our most precious resources in the 21st century, in fact one in nine people live without access to clean and drinkable water.” (Goodnet, 07 Oct, 2014). Human need water that is clean and safe to drink so it can help maintain the body 's temperature, it would also lubricate and cushion the joints. To help provide clean water to developing countries our organization should provide help to an organization called charity: water, which are a nonprofit organization that provides safe and clean water to developing countries. Our organization should provide help to Charity: Water because it could help spread awareness around the world, help developing countries in creating ways to have clean water, and provide a health living environment.

Leonardo da Vinci said, “Water is the driving force of all nature.” Most people will acknowledge this statement because water is necessary for both life and good health. Water is an essential ingredient of life not only for humans but also for the animals with which we share the world and the environment that sustains our presence. This is the most pressing global issue because when water is no longer safe to use, or is polluted, this causes problems in many other areas, such as with general health and hygiene, child mortality, and the environmental stability for the farming and ranching industries. According to the United Nations, forty percent of the world’s population is a victim of water scarcity, and the number is rising, which is why more recently this issue has become prominent with the media internationally. In the end, water is how our world survives, and when its purity is in jeopardy, so is the stability of our world.

34 African countries, 10 Asian countries, 5 Pacific Island Nations and one Caribbean nation” (nationsonline.org,). A majority of those 50 countries do not have access to clean water. Imagine what they could gain if clean water were to be available. Although many countries lack clean water 3 major benefits of clean water for underdeveloped countries are health improvements, clean bathing, and reduced constipation, which will all result in the quality of life to increase.

However, two out of every ten people living on this earth have no access to safe drinking water, four in ten have no access to basic latrine, and 3900 children die every day from water borne diseases worldwide (IDA, 2015). More than 748 million people living in rural