Every eight seconds, a child dies for drinking contaminated water. According to UNICEF, polluted water claims the lives of 1.5 million children every year due to water-borne diseases, which gives us a total of 5 million people who die every year just because of drinking water – water, that’s supposedly meant to help us, not kill us.
Fresh water is a valuable commodity which must be well managed and conserved. Drinking water is a basic necessity for human lives. But if the water we drink isn’t clean, it may be a cause of some serious disease. Statistics show that out of more than six billion people in the world today, an astonishing one billion have no access to clean drinking water.
There is a progress. Well, at least a bit. Despite this commendable progress, an estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still don’t have access to an improved water supply, and over 980 million don’t have access to ample sanitation. But that’s not just it. Millions more have their developments disrupted and are suffering health problems like diarrhea or other water-related diseases. An estimated 11.3 billion dollars a year is needed to meet low-cost basic levels of services for both drinking water and sanitation. By the year 2015, more than 80 percent will be needed in Africa and in Asia.
Back in the 1980s (wherein the decade was declared to be 'The International Drinking Water Supply' decade), the United Nations spent around $100 billion on water supply projects. But look here: we need not spend that much, in these critical times where every peso counts. The solution is not throwing more money into more water projects that don’t even seem to have much effect; heck, we're not even sure if the allotted money goes to those projects. The real problem is the lack of sustained, effective political commitment and implementation.
Every eight seconds, there’s a child who will not live to see tomorrow and celebrate their birthday. 88% of the 1.9 million children suffer from diarrhea each year. More than 4,000 children are dying every day because of diarrhea. Do we have to wait for more children to die?
Let us remember:
A LIFE IS TAKEN EVERY EIGHT SECONDS.
We have to act now, or start counting.
8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1.
Fresh water is a valuable commodity which must be well managed and conserved. Drinking water is a basic necessity for human lives. But if the water we drink isn’t clean, it may be a cause of some serious disease. Statistics show that out of more than six billion people in the world today, an astonishing one billion have no access to clean drinking water.
There is a progress. Well, at least a bit. Despite this commendable progress, an estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still don’t have access to an improved water supply, and over 980 million don’t have access to ample sanitation. But that’s not just it. Millions more have their developments disrupted and are suffering health problems like diarrhea or other water-related diseases. An estimated 11.3 billion dollars a year is needed to meet low-cost basic levels of services for both drinking water and sanitation. By the year 2015, more than 80 percent will be needed in Africa and in Asia.
Back in the 1980s (wherein the decade was declared to be 'The International Drinking Water Supply' decade), the United Nations spent around $100 billion on water supply projects. But look here: we need not spend that much, in these critical times where every peso counts. The solution is not throwing more money into more water projects that don’t even seem to have much effect; heck, we're not even sure if the allotted money goes to those projects. The real problem is the lack of sustained, effective political commitment and implementation.
Every eight seconds, there’s a child who will not live to see tomorrow and celebrate their birthday. 88% of the 1.9 million children suffer from diarrhea each year. More than 4,000 children are dying every day because of diarrhea. Do we have to wait for more children to die?
Let us remember:
A LIFE IS TAKEN EVERY EIGHT SECONDS.
We have to act now, or start counting.
8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1.
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