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WATER
IS PRECIOUS. THE HUMAN BODY CAN SURVIVE FOR WEEKS WITHOUT
FOOD. IT CAN ONLY GO FOR A FEW DAYS WITHOUT WATER.
Your brain, which enables you to read
this article, is about 75 percent water. Your body, which
allows you to respond to this article, is 50 to 65 percent
water. Children's bodies are approximately 75 percent water.
Conservatively speaking, on average, a person needs about
five gallons of safe water each day to meet his or her drinking,
cooking, hygiene, and domestic needs. Vital lifeforce that
it is, water also brings illness and death. Eighty percent
of all diseases in the developing world are caused by unsafe
water and sanitation-related problems. Two hundred million
people worldwide are debilitated to some degree by waterborne
schistosomiasis, a disease caused by a snail-transmitted parasite.
Upwards of 2.2 million people die annually from water-related
diarrheal illnesses. And most of those victims are children
under age five.
Some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water
— more than 95 percent of them live in developing nations.
In rural parts of the developing world, women and children
typically spend two to four hours each day under an unrelenting
sun hauling water from rivers and wells. (This image inspires
the beautiful new artwork that adorns T-shirts and other
materials for CWS-sponsored CROP Walk 2002-03.)
Approximately 220 million urban residents in the developing
world lack a source of safe drinking water near their homes.
That means families already living on the edge, in extreme
poverty, have to buy their water — at costs three to
ten times what their wealthier neighbors pay for it to be
piped into their homes and yards. Boiling, though the simplest
solution to making unsafe water safe, is not the answer: Those
families who have the least access to clean water also have
the least wherewithal to buy fuel for boiling. In addition,
in many parts of the world the overuse of wood and resultant
deforestation is changing the environment, negatively impacting
crops and household food security.
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