World Water Day 2012: Clean Water is Essential for Good Health–and Good Health Care

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In honor of World Water Day, our colleagues at IntraHealth have written a blog post about the links between access to clean water and quality health care. Be sure to check out IntraHealth’s World Water Day quiz too.

 

From our colleagues at IntraHealth:

 

A progress report released this month confirms that in 2010 the world achieved the Millennium Development Goal target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water. More than 2 billion people have received access to an improved water source since 1990.

 

For an estimated 780 million, however, safe drinking water is still out of reach. Geographically, progress has varied widely: almost half of the 2 billion people who gained access over the past two decades live in Asia— in China and India—while other regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, lag behind, and disparities across economic and rural/urban divides remain.

 

Health workers are on the frontlines combating the burden of disease caused by unsafe water in their communities, and for too many health workers, access to clean water on the job remains a luxury. In some countries, only about half of all health facilities have regular access to an improved water source. Safe water is not only essential to good health, but to good health care.

 

Read the full post here.

 

Be sure to take a look at the MHTF’s blog series on water and sanitation here.