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UN launches International Year of Sanitation

The overall objective of the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) is to accelerate progress towards providing adequate basic sanitation for the 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack access to this fundamental human right.

Access to sanitation is vital to ensuring health, dignity and sustainable social and economic development for the world’s poorest citizens.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for sanitation is 'to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to basic sanitation.' The target is wildly off track, and at current rates of progress will not be met.

WaterAid hopes that the UN’s International Year of Sanitation will help position the crisis in sanitation more prominently on the global agenda by raising the issue’s profile with politicians, civil society, the media and the general public.

"Sanitation is crucial to the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals. If UN member nations are serious about meeting the goals and tackling poverty then action must be taken to reverse the global crisis in sanitation. Almost half of the world’s population lacks access to even basic sanitation. The cost in human terms is huge, with 1.8 million children dying each year before their fifth birthday from diarrhoea. WaterAid welcomes the UN’s renewed commitment. Throughout the International Year of Sanitation we will be calling on governments to mobilise the necessary extraordinary effort to overcome this crisis." Sarah Dobsevage, Program Development Officer, WaterAid America.

WaterAid hopes that the International Year of Sanitation will raise awareness and promote decisive action by key players like the leaders of the world’s G8 group of industrialised nations. WaterAid will be campaigning throughout the year under the banner of End Water Poverty, to find out more go to www.endwaterpoverty.org.

In order to provide you with the information showing the need for an International Year of Sanitation given below are

WaterAid's key facts and statistics
? 1.1 billion people in the world do not have access to safe water, this is roughly one sixth of the world's population.
? 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is roughly two fifths of the world's population.
? 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day.
? WaterAid projects providing safe water, sanitation and hygiene education cost just £15 per head. (WaterAid)
? The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%. (British Medical Journal)
? The integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)
? Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis.
? The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 20kg, the same as the average UK airport luggage allowance.
Water in the world
? 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater. If the world's water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable.
? While the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold. Within the next fifty years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50%. (World Water Council)
Water-related diseases
? At any given time, almost half the population of the developing world is suffering from one or more of the main diseases associated with inadequate provision of water and sanitation.
? Around 90% of incidences of water-related diseases are due to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene and is mostly concentrated on children in developing countries. (WHO)
? Intestinal worms infect about 10% of the population of the developing world. Intestinal parasitic infections can lead to malnutrition, anaemia and stunted growth. (WHO)
? One gram of human faeces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. (UNICEF)
Water use
? The average European uses 200 litres of water every day. North Americans use 400 litres.
? The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))
? An old lavatory uses at least nine litres of water a flush; a low-flush model uses as little as three litres. Each household in the UK uses about 50 litres a person a day for flushing; 35% of domestic water use. (Environment Agency)
? The average amount of water needed to produce one kilogramme of potatoes is 1000 litres, wheat is 1450 litres and rice is 3450 litres. (Gleick 2001)

Education and livelihoods
? 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases.
? 11% more girls attend school when sanitation is available. (DFID)
? 40 billion working hours are spent carrying water each year in Africa. (Cosgrove and Rijsberman 1998)
? Households in rural Africa spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, and it is generally women who are burdened with the task. (DFID)

Water, sanitation and the Millennium Development Goals
? An extra US$10 billion each year is needed to reach the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation - about half of what rich countries spend on mineral water.
? To reach the water target will require the provision of services to an additional 300,000 people a day over the next decade, requiring current efforts to be stepped up by almost one third.
? To reach the sanitation target means providing services to an additional 450,000 people a day until 2015. This calls for almost a doubling of the current efforts. On current trends, the world will miss the sanitation target by more than half a billion people.
Unless otherwise stated, figures were taken from the Human Development report 2006.
The above information is taken from the WaterAid website www.wateraid.org/uk