Water Facts
- On average, every US quarter invested in water and sanitation provides an economic return of two US dollars.
- 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
- 43% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea.
- 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 – 14.
- 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.
- 884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.
- The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
- At any given time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
- Less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.
- An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
- About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. More than two thirds of people without an improved water source live on less than $2 a day.
- Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
- Without food a person can live for weeks, but without water you can expect to live only a few days.
- The daily requirement for sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs, as well as for assuring survival, is about 13.2 gallons per person.
- Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring.
