Access To Water And Sanitation

Key Facts on Access to Water & Sanitation

Access to Water

Unsafe water is responsible for 1.2 million deaths each year (2017)

Death rates are much higher in low-income countriesparticularly across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. For example, in 2017 annual deaths due to unsafe waterranged from a high of 14% in Chad (1-in-7 deaths) to less than 0.01% across most of Europe- more than a 1000-fold difference.
6% of deaths in low-income countries is due to unsafe water sources.

One-in-four people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water

SDG (Sustainable Development Goals by the UN) Target 6.1 is to : “achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” by 2030.
In countries with the lowest incomes, less than one-third of the population have safe water, most live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2015 (at the start of the SDGs) only 70% of the global population had safe drinking water whereas in 2020, 74% of the world population had access to a safely managed water source - an increase of four percentage points over five years.
This progress is far too slow to reach universal access by 2030. If progress continues at these rates, we would only reach 82% by 2030. If we’re to meet our target we need to see rates of progress more than triple for the coming decade.

Share of people who do not have access to an improved water source

In 2020, 6% of the world population did not have access to an improved water source - China and India top the list of people without access to improved water at 72 & 62 million respectively, as of 2020. They are followed by the Sub-Sahara African countries.
Typically most countries with greater than 90% of households with improved water have an average GDP per capita of more than $10,000-15,000.
Rural households lag behind on water access - this can be partly attributed to an income effect; urbanization is a trend strongly related to economic growth.
The infrastructural challenges of developing municipal water networks in rural areas also plays an important role in lower access levels relative to urbanised populations.

Access to Sanitation

Unsafe sanitation is responsible for 775,000 deaths each year

Unsafe sanitation is one of the world’s largest health and environmental problems – particularly for the poorest in the world.
Lack of access due to poor sanitation is a leading risk factor for infectious diseases, including cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio. It also exacerbates malnutrition, and in particular, childhood stunting.
Stunting - having a height below the median height-for-age - although, linked to poor nutritional intake, it is also linked to a range of compounding factors, including the recurrence of infectious diseases, childhood diarrhea, and poor sanitation & hygeine.
According to the Global Burden of Disease study, 775,000 people died prematurely in 2017 as a result of poor sanitation. To put this into context: this was almost double the number of homicides – close to 400,000 in 2017.
In low-income countries poor sanitation accounts for 5% of deaths, for example, in 2017 this ranged from a high of close to 11% in Chad – more than 1-in-10 deaths – to less than 0.01% across most of Europe.

Share of people using safely managed sanitation facilities

Nearly half of the world does not have access to safe sanitation

SDG Target 6.2 is to: “achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation” by 2030.
In 2020, just over half (54%) of the world population had access to safely managed sanitation. It is shocking that nearly one-in-two don’t. Around 6% do not have any sanitation facilities at all, and instead have to practice open defecation.
In countries like Singapore, Kuwait, Switzerland, the US and most of the high income countries in Europe it is very close to 100% (2020). In India only 46% of the population has access to safe sanitation (2020).
This then translates to 746 million people in India not having access to safe sanitation, compared to 863 million in the sub-saharan Africa, 933 million in eastern and south-eastern Asia, 444 million in China.
In countries with the lowest incomes, less than one-fifth of the population have safe sanitation - most live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The world has made progress in the last five years but this has been far too slow - in 2015 only 47% of the global population had safe sanitation. That means we’ve seen an increase of seven percentage points over five years.
If progress continues at these rates, we would only reach 68% by 2030. Almost one-third of the world would miss out. If we’re to meet our target we need to accelerate our current rates to more than triple for the coming decade

Share of people with access to improved sanitation facilities

In 2020, 68% of the world population had access to improved sanitation facilities. This means almost one-third of people do not have access.
Again the figure is very high for Sub-Saharan Africa (533 million), India (229 million), 127 million in eastern and south-eastern Asia and China - 74 million.

The provision of sanitation facilities increases with income with much higher access to improved sanitation as countries get richer.

Share of people still practicing open defecation

Open defecation refers to the defecation in fields, forest, bushes, open bodies of water, on beaches, in other open spaces or disposed of with solid waste. Open defecation has a number of negative health and social impacts, including the spread of infectious diseases, diarrhoea (especially in children), adverse health outcomes in pregnancy, malnutrition, as well as increased vulnerability to violence for women and girls.

In 2020, 6% of the world’s population was still practicing open defecation. This is highest in African countries like Niger, Chad with as many as 65-68% while the figure in India is 15% (2020).
For the majority of countries, open defecation in urban areas is typically below 20 percent of the population. For rural populations, however, the share of the population practicing open defecation can range from less than 20 percent to almost 90 percent.

Hygiene

Lack of access to handwashing facilities is responsible for 700,000 deaths each year

Even though nearly one-third of the world does not have access to basic handwashing facilities, this issue is one, which is largely limited to low and lower-middle income countries, particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Death rates are much higher in the low-income countries

Hygiene and handwashing is included in SDG Target 6.2, to: “achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation” by 2030.
In 2015, 67% of the world population had access to basic handwashing facilities - handwashing facilities with soap and water. That means 33% had to rely on washing facilities without soap, or none at all.
In 2020, 71% of the global population had basic hand washing facilities - an increase of four percentage points over five years. If progress continues at these rates, we will only reach 79% by 2030. One-in-five people would still be without access to basic hand washing facilities. If we’re to meet our target we need to see an almost four-fold acceleration of progress over the next decade.

(Data on Access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene is sourced from: The Lancet, WHO, World Bank, UNICEF and Our World in Data.)