Poor countries lag behind on water goals
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《英国医生杂志》
Geneva
Developing countries are lagging behind in worldwide targets to provide a quarter of the world's population with safe drinking water by 2015, posing a major obstacle to improving health for millions around the world, a conference heard last week.
Government ministers and other delegates are currently in New York to review progress on the global goals for water and sanitation that were set two years ago at the world summit on sustainable development held in Johannesburg in 2002.
Norway's environment minister, Borge Brende, who chaired the conference, said that about half of developing countries were not on track to meet the goal of providing 1.6 billion people with safe drinking water by 2015. That would halve the number of people without adequate clean water supplies, he said.
Mr Brende said the conference had assigned itself a watch-dog role "to see how far we have come, where we may be falling short, and what our priorities should be to get the process back on track."
A third of developing countries were on track in terms of achieving the goal of halving the number of people without adequate sanitation in the next 11 years. This would mean providing improved sanitation to a total of two billion people, Mr Brende said.
Credit: P VIROT/WHO
A toddler uses a recently installed pump providing clean water in a Delhi resettlement area
But he noted that in some countries clean water cost more than petrol so that only wealthier people or privileged groups with access to subsidised water could afford it.
Mr Brende called on developing countries to follow the example of South Africa, where nine million people have gained access to safe water since 1994, and of China and India, which he said had also made progress.
"More than half the hospital beds in the world are filled by people with water related diseases," Mr Brende said. "This clearly demonstrates the link between the water target and the health target."
Deaths from diarrhoeal diseases—such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, which can reach epidemic proportions—have dropped by 60% over the past 20 years. Diarrhoeal diseases remain a leading cause of death, however, claiming 1.8 million lives, mostly in children, in 2002, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.(Fiona Fleck)
Developing countries are lagging behind in worldwide targets to provide a quarter of the world's population with safe drinking water by 2015, posing a major obstacle to improving health for millions around the world, a conference heard last week.
Government ministers and other delegates are currently in New York to review progress on the global goals for water and sanitation that were set two years ago at the world summit on sustainable development held in Johannesburg in 2002.
Norway's environment minister, Borge Brende, who chaired the conference, said that about half of developing countries were not on track to meet the goal of providing 1.6 billion people with safe drinking water by 2015. That would halve the number of people without adequate clean water supplies, he said.
Mr Brende said the conference had assigned itself a watch-dog role "to see how far we have come, where we may be falling short, and what our priorities should be to get the process back on track."
A third of developing countries were on track in terms of achieving the goal of halving the number of people without adequate sanitation in the next 11 years. This would mean providing improved sanitation to a total of two billion people, Mr Brende said.
Credit: P VIROT/WHO
A toddler uses a recently installed pump providing clean water in a Delhi resettlement area
But he noted that in some countries clean water cost more than petrol so that only wealthier people or privileged groups with access to subsidised water could afford it.
Mr Brende called on developing countries to follow the example of South Africa, where nine million people have gained access to safe water since 1994, and of China and India, which he said had also made progress.
"More than half the hospital beds in the world are filled by people with water related diseases," Mr Brende said. "This clearly demonstrates the link between the water target and the health target."
Deaths from diarrhoeal diseases—such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, which can reach epidemic proportions—have dropped by 60% over the past 20 years. Diarrhoeal diseases remain a leading cause of death, however, claiming 1.8 million lives, mostly in children, in 2002, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.(Fiona Fleck)