Dirty Water
The United Nations declared this decade (2005 – 2015) as the decade of “Water for Life”, but how much is changing?
Today 1.1 billion will have no choice but to drink dirty water. That is 1 in 6 people who are exposed everyday to diseases such as malaria, cholera, dysentery and typhoid without access to safe water.
Women and children are the worst affected by water poverty. 2.2 children die each year from water related diseases. Some Women and girls may spend as many as 7 hours trekking for water that still is not fit to drink.
Thanks to an accident of birth, you’re not one of them.
But what if you were? If you had to wash the dishes with it, bathe in it, drink it – and ask yourself this question-if you had to give dirty water to those you love knowing it could kill them, would you?
Filed Under: All • Home Sweet Home
Excellent post on one of the world’s most important issues. Lots of other things depend on ready access to clean water. For example, in many places, girls can’t go to school until they’ve gone for water, making them miss hours of schooling, keeping them behind.
Oxfam has some good programs around water and sanitation, from purifiers to wells.
A damn good reminder that a simple well with clean water makes a huge difference to a whole village.
The sad thing is the list of diseases and dirty water is what some aboriginal communities face in our own country.
Water is liquid gold and, the way the trading is going, I reckon it will shortly replace gold on the stockmarket as the benchmark for commodity and currency prices,.
That is a powerful post and one we all should be aware of. How lucky we are but for how long. Its a commodity we should treat as the precious resource it is.
You know that’s a powerful video too. It’s an incredible decision to have to make whether you give your child water that could kill them, or if you deprive them of water which will kill them. In some ways, we are fortunate at the moment to not have to make such decisions, however if we had never known that there is a choice and that clean water is a real possibility, then our feelings about it would be very different indeed.
I don’t think there is an easy answer to your question about whether you would give your child the water or not. I think faced with that situation I would have to, there seems to be no choice about it.
Thanks for posing the question.