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The World Health Organization (WHO) today issued a warning call on the state of the world's water, indicating that nearly two billion people still use drinking water with faeces.
“Today, nearly two billion people use a source of drinking water contaminated with faecal matter, which puts them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio,”
said Dr. Maria Neira, Director of the Public Health Department at WHO. “It is estimated that contaminated drinking water causes more than 500,000 deaths caused by diarrhoea each year,” she said, quoted in a statement.
In 2015, countries have developed, within the framework of the United Nations, a list of 17 sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030. One of these objectives is to guarantee access to water and sanitation for all and to ensure sustainable management of water resources.
However, this goal cannot be achieved “unless measures are taken to use financial resources more effectively and increase efforts to identify new sources of funding,” warns WHO in its annual report, prepared with UN-Water, “Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water”.