Thursday, March 22, 2007

World Water Day



Today, March 22, is World Water Day. The day was created in 1992 when the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to draw attention to the world water crisis.
The world water crisis is one of the largest public health issues of our time. Nearly 1.1 billion people (roughly 20% of the world's population) lack access to safe drinking water and 40% is without adequate sanitation. The lack of clean, safe drinking water is estimated to kill almost 4,500 children per day. In fact, out of the 2.2 million unsafe drinking water deaths in 2004, 90% were children under the age of five. Water is essential to the treatment of diseases, something especially critical for children.
This problem isn't confined to a particular region of the world. A third of the Earth's population lives in "water stressed" countries and that number is expected to rise dramatically over the next two decades. The crisis is worst in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Many women and young girls in rural areas in Sub-Saharan African and other parts of the world must trek as much as six miles everyday to retrieve water for their families. Due to this manual labor, such women and children are prevented from pursuing an education, maintaining their households or earning additional income.
Thus, the lack of clean water, coupled with the lack of basic sanitation and a dearth of hygiene education, is one of the largest obstacles to progress and development in these regions and across the world. The UN has prioritized water access among its Millennium Development Goals because it contributes to such widespread suffering, including increased poverty, high child mortality rates, depressed education levels, and political instability. Without question, the world water crisis condemns billions of people to a perpetual struggle to survive at the subsistence level, thus inspiring millions to engage and alleviate this problem.
Recognize how truly lucky, blessed, and fortunate we are peeps.

2 comments:

kimmyk said...

When Jamie was overseas [Asscrackistan] he said that men would have sex with each other [yeah, cause that's how they roll in Asscrack] and it would be in the poppy fields [which were in the swamps] and that water would flow downstream and into the villages where people would wash their hands in the streets and take care of business [going to the bathroom, etc] then it would keep on flowing right into the pots that people were using to cook with.

After he told me that??? I didn't fuss about a little extra chlorine in my water anymore.

Mo said...

I will take the chlorine in my water too any day after hearing that.

We truly are some blessed folks.