PHA-Exchange> WORLD FACING "SILENT EMERGENCY" AS BILLIONS STRUGGLE WITHOUT CLEAN WATER OR BASIC SANITATION, SAY WHO AND UNICEF

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> *WORLD FACING "SILENT EMERGENCY" AS BILLIONS STRUGGLE WITHOUT CLEAN 
> WATER OR BASIC SANITATION, SAY WHO AND UNICEF
> *
>
> */New report warns that vicious cycle of ill-health and poverty could 
> defeat human development efforts, with children the first to suffer
> /*
>
> *New York/Geneva* - More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of 
> the world's population - do not have access to basic sanitation, and 
> more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking 
> water, warns a report released today by the World Health Organization 
> (WHO) and UNICEF.
>
> Entitled/ Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) drinking 
> water and sanitation target - A mid-term assessment of progress/, the 
> report details the progress of individual countries, regions, and the 
> world as a whole between the MDG baseline year of 1990 and the 
> half-way mark of 2002. It makes two significant predictions on 
> reaching the 2015 goals, based on progress to date:
>
>     * The global sanitation target will be missed by half a billion
>       people - most of them in rural Africa and Asia - allowing waste
>       and disease to spread, killing millions of children and leaving
>       millions more on the brink of survival.
>     * The world is on track to meet the drinking water target. 
>
>
> The severe human and economic toll of missing the sanitation target 
> could be prevented by closing the gap between urban and rural 
> populations and by providing simple hygiene education, say WHO and 
> UNICEF.
>
> The agencies warned that a global trend towards urbanization is 
> marginalising the rural poor and putting huge strain on basic services 
> in cities. As a result, families living in rural villages and urban 
> slums are being trapped in a cycle of ill-health and poverty. Children 
> are always the first to suffer from the burden of disease caused by 
> dirty water and poor hygiene, while the wider impact of unhygienic 
> environments drags back economic progress and erodes good governance.
>
> "Around the world millions of children are being born into a silent 
> emergency of simple needs," says Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's Executive 
> Director. "The growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots 
> in terms of access to basic services is killing around 4000 children 
> every day and underlies many more of the 10 million child deaths each 
> year. We have to act now to close this gap or the death toll will 
> certainly rise."
>
> "Water and sanitation are among the most important determinants of 
> public health. Wherever people achieve reliable access to safe 
> drinking-water and adequate sanitation they have won a major battle 
> against a wide range of diseases," says WHO Director-General Dr LEE 
> Jong-wook.
>
> Developing regions of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, are most 
> at risk. But the report also highlights some worrying trends in the 
> industrialised regions, where coverage figures for clean water and 
> basic sanitation facilities are estimated to have decreased by 2 per 
> cent between 1990 and 2002. In the former Soviet Union, only 83 per 
> cent of people had access to adequate sanitation facilities. With 
> economic and population pressures growing, these percentages could 
> decrease.
>
> The consequences of inaction today are severe, according to WHO and 
> UNICEF. Diarrhoeal disease currently takes the lives of 1.8 million 
> people each year - most of them children under five - with millions 
> more left permanently debilitated. Over 40 billion work hours are lost 
> in Africa to the need to fetch drinking water. And many children, 
> particularly girls, are prevented from going to school for want of 
> latrines, squandering their intellectual and economic potential.
>
> Reversing this trend and moving towards universal coverage for water 
> and sanitation will take more than money, said Bellamy and Lee. 
> National policies based on the principle of "some for all" rather than 
> "all for some" have been the key to improvements in many countries. 
> And at the local level, resources have to be retargeted to include the 
> poorest communities, with local government and the private sector 
> co-operating to bring affordable solutions.
>
> "To meet the 2015 targets, countries need to create the political will 
> and resources to serve a billion new urban dwellers, and reduce by 
> almost 1 billion the number of rural dwellers without access to 
> adequate sanitation facilities. Otherwise we risk leaving millions, if 
> not billions, out of the development process," says Dr Lee.
>
> WHO and UNICEF say the report, which is the first in a series looking 
> at progress in water and sanitation coverage, should be a wake-up call 
> to all global leaders. Every country still has work to do to eliminate 
> disparities in basic services and the data shows clearly how that can 
> be done before the MDG deadline of 2015.
>
> There are also some very encouraging signs. Great gains in water and 
> sanitation coverage have been made against considerable odds in many 
> countries. This progress came as a direct result of political 
> prioritisation and a drive to find locally effective solutions.
>
> "This report is important because it proves that significant 
> improvements are possible in a short space of time, even in the 
> poorest countries." says Ms Bellamy. "By identifying trends now, and 
> committing to course corrections, we have a real opportunity to ensure 
> that by 2015 these basic essentials of life are available to all."
>
>
> *ANNEX 1 - PROGRESS OVERVIEW*
>
> */Progress towards the drinking water goal:/*
>
> The world appears on target to reach the MDG drinking water goal of 
> reducing the number of people without access to an improved drinking 
> water source to 800 million by 2015. Over the past 12 years, WHO and 
> UNICEF estimate that an additional 1.1 billion people have gained 
> access to an improved source of drinking water - bringing global 
> coverage rates up to 83 per cent, from 77 per cent in 1990.
>
> South Asia shows the greatest gains in drinking water coverage, 
> increasing from 71 per cent to 84 per cent. Great progress has been 
> made in India and China. But Asia still accounts for two-thirds (675 
> million) of the people worldwide whose drinking water still comes from 
> unsafe sources like rivers, ponds, and vendors.
>
> Sub-Saharan Africa has shown patchier progress. While countries such 
> as Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Malawi and Tanzania have 
> all increased drinking water coverage by over 50 per cent, the 
> region's overall drinking water coverage has increased by only nine 
> percentage points since 1990 - to 58 per cent - leaving 288 million 
> people still with no choice but to rely on water that could leave them 
> sick or dead.
>
> In addition to the encouraging progress made by individual countries 
> across the globe, much of the new coverage in developing countries has 
> come from water piped directly into homes. Roughly half of the world's 
> population now drinks piped water. WHO and UNICEF stress that 
> substantive economic benefits will result from this increase: piped 
> water into the home is associated with the greatest improvements in 
> household health, and frees women and girls from the burden of water 
> carrying, giving them greater time for work, family and school.
>
> */Progress toward the sanitation goal:/*
>
> While more than 1 billion people have gained access to basic 
> sanitation services, population growth has outstripped our efforts, 
> translating the numerical gains into much smaller gains in 
> proportional terms. In 1990, 49 per cent of world had access to basic 
> sanitation facilities. Today, that figure has increased by only nine 
> percentage points, leaving us way behind schedule for the 2015 MDG 
> target (75 per cent coverage). If this trend continues, the world will 
> miss its sanitation pledge by over 500 million people.
>
> Eastern Asia shows the greatest increase in coverage, from 24 to 45 
> per cent, fuelled primarily by gains in China. But Asia is still home 
> to three out of the four people worldwide who don't have use of even a 
> simple improved latrine. Over half of all people living without 
> improved sanitation live in India (735 million) and China (725 million).
>
> Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, has the lowest percentage of people 
> with access to basic sanitation facilities - 36 per cent, an increase 
> of just four per cent since 1990. In the developing world as a whole, 
> only 49% of people had access to adequate sanitation facilities, while 
> in the world's developed regions, 98% of people did.
>
> Worldwide, Benin, India, Madagascar and Myanmar made especially rapid 
> progress towards the sanitation target. But only two out of the 
> world's nine developing regions - Eastern Asia and South-eastern Asia 
> - are on track to meet the sanitation goal, with north Africa and 
> Latin America very close behind.
>


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