development United Nations (Reuters) – developing countries have achieved since its objective for 2015 to drastically reduce the number of people without access regularly to better drinking water, although much of that achievement has been achieved India and China, told the United Nations Tuesday.
The foundation of the United Nations for children, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization (who) said in a joint report that although the UN target of halving the number of people without clean water had reached soon, the achieve a similar improvement in sanitation by 2015 was not going to comply.
“Some regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, are lagging,” said the Secretary general of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, in the report. “Many rural residents and the poor often are lost improvements in drinking water and sanitation”, added.
“Reduce these disparities should be a priority, said.
The objectives of improving access to drinking water and sanitation are part of the objectives of development of the Millennium (MDGs), adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to combat poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries.
Access to what the United Nations described as water sources “improved” between 1990 and 2010 and the percentage of world population that even usa water clearly unhealthy represents only 11 percent, below the 24 percent in 1990, said the report of the UNICEF/who managed to more than 2 billion people.
, However, there is a warning in the text. Although the original ODM spoke of access to safe drinking water, UNICEF/who report refers to “improved” water resources – one important difference.
The text defines the improved sources of water as those protected from external contamination, particularly of fecal matter, though the water they contain may not be really safe for drinking.
“It is likely that the number of people that use secure water supplies has been overestimated,” warns the report.
There are also significant geographical differences. Although 90 per cent or more of the population has better access to drinking water in Latin America, the Caribbean, the North of Africa and good part of Asia, only 61 per cent has constant access to water resources safer in sub-Saharan Africa.
The goal of sanitation, difficult for
In general in the developing world, 86 per cent have regular access to safe water. But in the poorest countries – those qualified as “least developed” – only 63 percent have better water.
This means that the goal of safe drinking water is has failed for more than 780 million people, said the report.
Last week, the World Bank said developing countries appear to have already met the UN target of halving extreme poverty in the poorest nations of the world by 2012, thanks mainly to the Chinese economic boom.
In addition, China, along with India, represents much of the improvements in access to water is it comes to.
“The advancement of India and China accounts for almost half of global progress as far as the objectives of water referred to in”, said the report. “If only considered the developing world, China and India represent more than half of the population that has access”.
Is not a surprise, according to the report, since the two countries represent 46 per cent of the population developing in the world.
Although there has been progress in order to improve access to adequate sanitation, the developing world will not track to meet that goal.
“Globally, 63 per cent of the population uses improved facilities of write-downs, an increase of almost 1,800 million people since 1990”, the report said.
To the current level of progress, the report points out, 67 percent of the world will have access to better sanitation, a figure that is below the target of 75 per cent by 2015.
“Since diarrhoeal diseases caused by inadequate sanitation is currently the leading cause of child deaths in Africa, the progress has to improve,” said Barbara Frost, Director of the Group of WaterAid campaign, in a statement on the report of the United Nations.
