Some scary statistics from an August 26, 2004
World Health Organization (WHO)
press release: More than 2.6 billion people (which
amounts to over 40% of the world's population), do
not have access to basic sanitation and more than one
billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking
water.
In 2000, the
United Nations held a Millenium Summit, and among
the goals established were "that the proportion of
people worldwide not having access to an improved
water source and the proportion of people worldwide
not having access to adequate sanitation facilities
should be halved" (our italics) by 2015. The
bad news is that it is anticipated that the sanitation
target will be missed by half a billion people. The
good news is that it is believed that the drinking
water target will be met.
Still, agency spokespersons note that there are "…
some worrying trends in the industrialised regions,
where coverage figures for clean water and basic sanitation
facilities are estimated to have decreased by 2 per
cent between 1990 and 2002." Moreover, "Diarrhoeal
disease currently takes the lives of 1.8 million people
each year – most of them children under five
– with millions more left permanently debilitated.
Over 40 billion work hours are lost in Africa to the
need to fetch drinking water. And many children, particularly
girls, are prevented from going to school for want
of latrines …."
And if we ever thought for a minute that this sort
of thing was not our problem in the West, or if we
simply wanted to be more directly frightened, read
books like: Blue
Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of
the World's Water and Water
Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.
Choose your career:
MedHunters is the world's biggest healthcare job board.
Our job directory has 18,226 jobs with 2,533 hospitals
and other direct employers.
We want you to find your next job on MedHunters. Need
Help? Call us at 1-888-884-8242, email us at info@medhunters.com
or sign up now.
Article published on Sep 3 04
12:59AM.
