The report will be formally presented to the international community on World Water Day, 22 March, ( http://www.waterday2003.org ) during the World Water Forum in Kyoto. A series of high-level panel discussions will be organized to discuss the results.
Chapter highlights:
Health and Economics
“The twenty-first century is the century in which the overriding problem is one of water quality and management”, says the report. More than 2.2 million people die each year from diseases related to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation. Water vector-borne diseases also take a heavy toll: about a million people die from malaria each year and more than 200 million suffer from schistosomiasis, known as bilharzias. “Yet these terrible losses, with the waste and suffering they represent, are preventable”.
The international community pledged in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (2000) and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. To achieve these targets, an additional 1.5 billion people will require improved access to water supply (by 2015). This means providing services for another 100 million people each year (274,000/day).
Chapter highlights:
Health and Economics
“The twenty-first century is the century in which the overriding problem is one of water quality and management”, says the report. More than 2.2 million people die each year from diseases related to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation. Water vector-borne diseases also take a heavy toll: about a million people die from malaria each year and more than 200 million suffer from schistosomiasis, known as bilharzias. “Yet these terrible losses, with the waste and suffering they represent, are preventable”.
The international community pledged in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (2000) and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. To achieve these targets, an additional 1.5 billion people will require improved access to water supply (by 2015). This means providing services for another 100 million people each year (274,000/day).