1.1 BILLION  PEOPLE LACK CLEAN WATER (1 IN 6 PEOPLE)

1 CHILD DIES  FROM LACK OF CLEAN WATER EVERY  FIFTEEN (15) SECONDS

PREVENTABLE, WATER-RELATED DISEASES  KILL NEARLY FOURTEEN THOUSAND (14,000) PEOPLE DAILY

That’s the problem. Unsafe water is the world’s number one killer. The lack of safe drinking water and proper sanitation results in more deaths every year than AIDS or Malaria. It kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war! Children are the most vulnerable to the effects of unsafe drinking water and sanitation problems. Of the thousands of people who die daily from this problem, 90% are children under the age of five. Unsafe drinking water is responsible for 80% of all the sicknesses in the world. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of the disease and loss of life that results from  preventable , water-related illness! That’s right it’s all preventable.

Seventy percent (70%) of the earth is covered in water. Because of the amount of water covering the planet and the fact that clean drinking water and proper sanitation is accessible to most Americans, we find it difficult to imagine that lack of clean water could possibly be the source of such misery and loss. It helps though to understand that 97.5% of the water covering the earth is salt water, undrinkable. That leaves only 2.5% of the earth’s water available for more than six billion people on the planet. Even more disconcerting, 69.5% of the fresh water on the planet is locked inside glaciers, snow, and permafrost! 30.1% of the fresh water is deep underground in fresh water aquifers. Only .4% is in surface lakes, rivers, and air humidity!

Thinks about this - the average American uses upwards of 150 gallons of water every day to cook, clean, and drink. The average person in the developing world struggles to find five gallons each day, and sometimes has to walk three or four hours round trip each day to collect the water they use.

Economics then becomes a factor. Most people in developing countries live on less than two dollars ($2) a day. Even though many of them literally live on top of fresh water aquifers, they simply cannot afford to drill wells that cost from $3000 to $15,000 a piece.

The problem is huge. But, there is a solution.