Do you ever really think about how lucky you are to be able to open a tap and fill a glass with clean drinking water, or run a bath, take a shower, flush a toilet, cook food or brush your teeth?
Most of us live in countries where clean running water is the norm, and we rarely think about how privileged we are, but for millions of individuals all over the world this is not so. Every day individuals in rural communities and poor urban centres throughout the world get ill and die from lack of access to clean drinking water and unhygienic or no sanitation.
Why is Access to Clean Water so Important?
The burden of walking long distances to collect what is often polluted water from the nearest water source generally falls to the women and young girls, and this adds an additional burden such as encountering danger in the form of strange men or animals, and not being able to go to school or study.
Access to clean water important because:
Education
A good education starts with access to clean water and good sanitation; when children have to fetch water they often do not have time to do homework, and drinking contaminated water or not having access to good hygiene causes illness such as diarrhoea, from which millions of children die every year.
Health
Approximately 50% of all the hospital beds across the world are filled with individuals suffering from a water-related disease. This figure rises to around 80% in developing countries, and about 20% of deaths under the age of 5 globally are due to a water-related disease. Most of these diseases are not found in developed countries due to their the sophisticated water systems, but cholera, typhoid fever and other diseases still run rampant in the developing world.
Food Security
Access to clean water is vital to food security as a water shortage means less crops. Without access to a reliable water source, it is difficult to grow food and even more difficult to preserve and prepare it. 70% of the global available water sources are utilised for agricultural and irrigation purposes, and only 10% for domestic use, which means that the majority of individuals in rural areas live on subsistence farming, which is insufficient to provide all the nutrition they need.
Access to clean water means less illness; it means better sanitation, more water for agriculture, which means better nutrition, which in turn leads to better education and a way out of poverty.
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