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FACTS ABOUT WATER AND HEALTH (2) The World Health Organization’s (WHO) global estimate of the number of deaths from infectious diarrhoeas in the year 2001 amounts to 2 million for all age groups, with a heavy toll among children under five: an estimated 1.4 million childhood deaths. The diseases and conditions of ill-health directly associated with water, sanitation and hygiene include infectious diarrhoea (which, in turn, includes cholera, salmonellosis, shigellosis, amoebiasis and a number of other protozoal and viral infections), typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, acute hepatitis A, acute hepatitis E and F, fluorosis, arsenicosis, legionellosis, methaemoglobinaemia, schistosomiasis, trachoma, intestinal helminth infections (including ascariasis, trichuriasis and hookworm infection), dracunculiasis, scabies, dengue, the filariases (including lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis), malaria, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile virus infection, yellow fever and impetigo. Every day, diarrhoeal diseases cause an estimated 5,483 deaths, mostly among children under five. WHO estimates that malaria kills over one million people every year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, over 2 billion people are infected with schistosomes and soil-transmitted helminths and 300 million of these suffer serious illness as a result. In Bangladesh alone, some 35 million people are exposed, on a daily basis, to elevated levels of arsenic in their drinking water, which will ultimately threaten their health and shorten their life expectancy. Each year 19.5 million people are infected with roundworm and whipworm alone, with the highest rate of infection among school-age children. Schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is also a young people’s disease; an estimated 118.9 million children under fifteen years are infected.
Information from: Source: UNESCO Water Portal, April 2005
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