“SOS”: One in 10 people has access to clean water

Approximately 650 million people, or one in ten people in the world don’t have access to clean water, which creates the risk to people of contracting infectious diseases and to die prematurely, according to the UN.
Unclean water and poor sanitary conditions can cause severe diarrheal diseases in children, causing the death of around 900 children aged under five years of age on the day in the world, or one child every two minutes, according to calculations by the UN.
Between the newborn, infectious diseases, due to lack of drinking water and an unclean environment, they cause a death a minute in any place in the world.

The UN stresses that access to safe drinking water and adequate health services is of vital importance for the health of the people. This is important for other reasons, also notes, ranging from benefits that are easy to identify and to calculate, as the time and money savings, and reach up to more subtle factors, such as the comfort, the prosperity, the dignity, the privacy and the security.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that every $ 1 invested in improving water and health services provided there is a benefit 4 to $ 12, depending on the type of intervention.

This year, on the occasion of World Water Day on 22 March, the UN seeks to focus the attention of the international community to the issue of water and jobs, aiming to identify the ways in which water can create paid and decent jobs and to contribute to a more green economy and sustainable development.