World Water Day 2004: Water and Disasters

Since 1993, the United Nations General Assembly has designated March 22 of each year as World Water Day (WWD) in recognition of water as a basic requirement for life and the need to manage this precious resource wisely. WWD 2004 focuses on the theme "Water and Disasters". Weather and climate-related extreme events such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes are disasters that can and do cause tremendous human suffering, loss of life, and economic damage.

But there is another type of disaster that happens every day in the developing world, and it has become such a mundane occurrence that it rarely stirs any interest in the world media. Today, more than a billion people (more than 30 times the population of Canada) remain without access to safe drinking water. Double this number has no access to any form of improved sanitation facilities. It has been estimated that more than two million people in developing countries, mostly children under the age of five, die every year from water and sanitation related diseases or more than 6,000 deaths a day. This is equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing on a daily basis. And this number does not include the hundreds of millions of people who are infected by these diseases, and subsequently suffer from severe health consequences. Trachoma (eye infections), for example, is strongly related to the lack of clean water for bathing and blinds six million people every year.

While water and sanitation related diseases are prevalent throughout the developing world, the good news is that the solutions to deal with them are well known. The development of community-managed water supply systems, coupled with sanitation and hygiene education, can significantly improve the health of poor people living in rural areas and urban slums.

To read about how WaterCan celebrated the most recent World Water Day, click here :