Global Access To Clean Water
In 2010 about 85% of the global population (6.74 billion people) had access to piped water supply through house connections or to an improved water source through other means than house, including standpipes, "water kiosks", protected springs and protected wells. However, about 14% (884 million people) did not have access to an improved water source and had to use unprotected wells or springs, canals, lakes or rivers for their water needs.
A clean water supply, especially so with regard to sewage, is the single most important determinant of public health. Destruction of water supply and/or sewage disposal infrastructure after major catastrophes (earthquakes, floods, war, etc.) poses the immediate threat of severe epidemics of waterborne diseases, several of which can be life-threatening.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply
Famous quotes containing the words global, access, clean and/or water:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“How clean the sun when seen in its idea,
Washed in the remotest cleanliness of a heaven
That has expelled us and our images . . .
The death of one god is the death of all.
Let purple Phoebus lie in umber harvest,
Let Phoebus slumber and die in autumn umber....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“What’s water but the generated soul?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)