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Half of the world doesn’t have access to safe drinking water, study estimates
A new study has estimated that twice as many people don’t have access to clean drinking water than initially thought.
The UN General Assembly declared clean drinking water a human right in 2010, but the number without it is still astronomically high.
Half of the world doesn’t have safe drinking water
The report, published in the Science Journal on August 15, estimates that more than 4.4 billion people in poorer countries lack safe drinking water.
With a global population of almost 8.2 billion, that means almost half of the world doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.
In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 2 million people were without safe drinking water, so the new figure is more than double.
Researchers combined Earth Observation data, geospatial modeling, and household survey data to create the estimation.
They also found that only 1 in 3 people in low and middle-income countries have access to safely managed drinking water services.
Countries with least access to safe drinking water
According to the study, the majority of people lacking safe water live in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes all African countries that lie south of the Sahara desert, has the world’s lowest rates of safe water use.
In 12 sub-Saharan African countries less than 10% of the population has access to safe drinking water and in 89 regions of these countries, less than 5% of the population has clean water. This untreated water is usually collected from wells, springs, lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.
In the US and other developed countries, tap water goes through a series of treatment steps including coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains.
This cleans and filters the water, killing any parasites, bacteria, or viruses and making it safe for us to drink. However, many developing countries do not have these advanced systems, resulting in life-threatening illnesses.
Main reason for lack of safe drinking water
The main reason why so much drinking water isn’t safe is fecal contamination, meaning the water contains human waste and contains disease-causing pathogens as a result.
Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to the transmission of many serious diseases including cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio, the WHO reveals.
Cholera is a diarrhoeal infection which is caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio Cholerae. It can kill within hours if not treated rapidly with intravenous fluids and antibiotics.
Typhoid is a life-threatening infection caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi which is spread through contaminated food or water. Once the bacteria is ingested, it multiplies and spreads through the bloodstream.
1 million people are estimated to die every year from diarrhoea alone as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene.
