The Global Water Crisis

You turn a faucet and there it is….pure, safe water. We don’t think about it, we just accept it as a natural, accepted part of life. It’s a given.

For the 884 million people in the developing world who lack access to safe water supplies, however, water is a very precious commodity. Pure water is needed for drinking, irrigation to grow food, for hygiene, food preparation, and other aspects of daily living. However, these poor people, most of whom live in the slums of the developing world, often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city, and have little or no access to improved sanitation facilities. As a result:

• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases.
• 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0-14. 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea every year.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

Meanwhile, an American taking a five-minute shower uses more clean water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

Of the 60 million people added to the world’s towns and cities every year, most occupy impoverished slums and shantytowns with no sanitation facilities. Is it any wonder that at any one time, more than half the poor in the developing world are ill from causes related to hygiene, sanitation and water supply? The majority of illness in the world is cause by fecal matter.

Without food a person can live for weeks, but you can live only a few days without water. CMF and its partners are committed to helping people around the world develop access to safe, pure water supplies