Access to clean, safe and secure drinking water as well as water for other reasons such as food preparation, laundry and personal hygiene is a prerequisite for communities to prosper and should be a priority for all governments. It has also been declared a fundamental human right.

Unfortunately this is not a reality for millions of individuals across the globe, especially those living in developing countries and in rural areas, who do not have access to safe water supplies or hygienic sanitation.

Approximately 650 million individuals globally do not have access to potable drinking water; 2.3 billion individuals do not have access to improved sanitation; and 500,000 children die annually from diarrhoea as a result of drinking unsafe water and not having decent sanitation.

Those of us who live in developed countries generally don’t even think twice about the water that we so nonchalantly drink, wash, do our laundry and water our garden with, let alone where it comes from or the fact that not everyone has it so easy. We do not know the struggle to provide clean water for drinking and bathing in, or the agony of a parent watching their child die from a water-borne illness like diarrhoea, which is merely an irritation in most of the world.

None of us think about water, or the lack of it, until we experience a period of drought in which there is suddenly not sufficient water to go around; not enough water for agricultural purposes, which causes crops to fail and food prices to rise; not enough water to irrigate our gardens; not enough water for personal hygiene, and barely enough water for drinking purposes.

Access to potable water allows individuals to maintain their health via good hydration, improves a community’s economic health because it means that women can work instead of walking for long distances to collect water for their family. Access to clean water and good sanitation also keeps girl-children in school, especially during “that time of the month.”

Water on earth is not infinite, so wherever you live, make sure that you do not waste water but reuse and recycle wherever possible.

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