One would think that in the modern world that we find ourselves in, everyone has access to the most essential element needed to stay alive, but unfortunately, that is not the truth.
Here are some very interesting and extremely scary facts about water that you might not know about.
- Worldwide there are more people without access to clean, safe drinking water than there are people in China! Over 1.6 billion people do not have drinking water.
- More people in Africa alone die from disease infected water than wars kill worldwide each year. An estimated 3.5 -4.5 million people die each year because they don’t have access to safe water.
- The average person in many African countries use less water each day than what we use to flush our toilets. Your toilet uses 8L of water on average, they have less than 5L per day
- Diarrhoea is the leading cause of deaths. Contaminated water claim more than 2 million youth lives each year.
- On average, a child dies every 15 seconds due to the lack of safe drinking water
- 50% of all the schools don’t have access to drinking water, or any sanitation
- The recommended water that a person needs per day for sanitation, drinking, cooking and general consumption is 50L
- 18 litres of water weights around 20 kilograms.
- 2/3 of all the struggling water users worldwide use less than 6L of water per day. That is almost 1/10 of what they should use
- The average African woman spends close to 20h per week collecting water
- African woman walk, on average, around 7 kilometres each day just to get a watering hole or well
- Many Sub-Saharan Africans share the source of their drinking water with animals and other wildlife, leading to more disease being spread and transferred.
- To produce one kilogram of coffee takes more than 10’000 litres of water
- To produce one kilogram of rice requires more than 5000 litres of water
- It only takes around £1 to help a child to get safe drinking water
These are very sad and troubling statistics, but with the aid of major companies and individuals there is hope. This is why we at AquAid have donated over £6 million pounds to water related projects in the Thirld world. We continue to do so to bring hope to thousands of lives and make a difference.
