World water day: UNICEF says world’s poorest have least access to safe water

A boy drinks unsafe water from a pond in a Somali region of Ethiopia, where drought has fueled conflict

March 23, 2014 (Solomon Star) — ALMOST four years after the world met the global target set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for safe drinking water, and after the UN General Assembly declared that water was a human right, over three-quarters of a billion people, most of them poor, still do not have this basic necessity, UNICEF said to mark World Water Day today
Estimates from UNICEF and WHO published in 2013 are that a staggering 768 million people do not have access to safe drinking water, causing hundreds of thousands of children to sicken and die each year.
Most of the people without access are poor and live in remote rural areas or urban slums.
UNICEF estimates that 1,400 children under five die every day from diarrhoeal diseases linked to lack of safe water and adequate sanitation and hygiene. Read more…