Statistics

Key facts and statistics

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF)
  
  
• 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population. (WHO/UNICEF)
  

• 1.4 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 4,000 deaths a day or one every 20 seconds. (WHO)
  

• WaterAid projects providing safe water, sanitation and hygiene education cost just $30 per head. (WaterAid)

• Hand-washing with soap at critical times can reduce the incidence of diarrhea by up to 47%. (UN Water)
  

• The integrated approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)

• For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, $8 is returned. (UNDP).

• The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 40 pounds, the same as an airport luggage allowance.

• Water and sanitation infrastructure helps people take the first essential step out of the cycle of poverty and disease. In the UK the expansion of sanitation infrastructure in the 1880s contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following four decades.

Water in the world

• 97.5% of the earth's water is saltwater. If the world's water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable.

• While the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold. Within the next fifty years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50%. (World Water Council)

Water-related diseases

• At any one time, half of the developing world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diarrhea. (UNDP)

• Intestinal worms infect about 10% of the population of the developing world. Intestinal parasitic infections can lead to malnutrition, anemia and stunted growth. (WHO)
  
  
• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at a time. (UNICEF)

Water use

• The average North American uses 400 liters of water every day.
  
  
• The average person in the developing world uses 10 liters of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))
  
  
• An old lavatory uses at least nine liters of water a flush; a low-flush model uses as little as three liters.
  
  
• On current trends over the next 20 years humans will use 40% more water than they do now. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
  
  
• Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world's water consumption. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP

• The average amount of water needed to produce one kilogram of potatoes is 1000 liters, wheat is 1450 liters and rice is 3450 liters. (Gleick 2001)

Sanitation

• Every year, the average person produces 35 kilos of feces and 500 liters of urine. (UN Water)

• One gram of human feces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs. (UNICEF)

• No sub-Saharan African country is on-track to meet the sanitation Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without sanitation between 1990 and 2015. (WHO/UNICEF)

• Every year, around 60 million children in the developing world are born into households without access to sanitation. (UN Water)

• Children living in households with no toilet are twice as likely to get diarrhea as those with a toilet. (WEDC)

• In the developing world as a whole, around 90% of sewage is discharged untreated into rivers, polluting them and affecting plant and aquatic life. (UN)

Education and livelihoods

• Lack of safe water and sanitation costs sub-Saharan Africa around 5% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year. (UNDP)
  
  
• 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases.
  
  
• 11% more girls attend school when sanitation is available. (UK Government Department for International Development)
  

• 40 billion working hours are spent carrying water each year in Africa. (Cosgrove and Rijsberman 1998)

• Households in rural Africa spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, and it is generally women who are burdened with the task. (UK Government Department for International Development)

Water, sanitation and the Millennium Development Goals

• 1.2 billion people gained access to sanitation between 1990 and 2004. (UN Water)

• 1.7 billion people will still need sanitation even if the 2015 MDG sanitation goal to halve the proportion of people without sanitation is reached. (WHO/UNICEF)

• Cost of meeting the sanitation MDG target every year until 2015: US$9.5 billion. If sustained the same investment could achieve basic sanitation for the entire world within 20 years. US$9.5 billion a year is 1% of annual world military spending and an estimated one-third of what the world spends on bottled water every year. (UN Water)

• Cost of meeting the water and sanitation MDG targets every year until 2015 is US$11.3 billion. (UN Water)

Financing the sector

• Over the past 10 years, aid to health and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased by nearly 500%, while aid to water and sanitation has increased by only 79%. (OECD)

Back to top