All About: Water and Health

The next time you fall sick and someone suggests it's because of something in the water, they could be right. According to the World Bank, 88 percent of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

The number are daunting. Annually, water-related problems are responsible for:

4 billion cases of diarrhea, resulting in the deaths of more than 6 million children.

300 million malaria sufferers;

200 million schistosomiasis sufferers;

6 million people who have been struck blind by trachoma;

and 500 million people who are currently at risk of contracting it, the World Bank says.

The U.N. also suggests that unsanitary water is to thank for 1.5 million cases of hepatitis A (and 133 million cases of intestinal worms).

At any one point in time, 50 percent of all people in the developing world will be in hospital suffering from one or more water-related diseases. Most will be children, water-related diseases being the second biggest killer of children worldwide (after acute respiratory diseases like Tuberculosis), according to Water Aid. (Diarrhea alone has killed more children in 10 years than all the people killed in wartime since World War 2, according to UNICEF).

Humans have become walking, talking carriers of diseases, thanks to poor sanitation and undrinkable water. Take one gram of human excrement these days, UNICEF says, and you could find around 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs.

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