Billions of people in developing countries lack access to basic sanitation
- 2.5 billion people (38% of the world’s population) do not have access to improved sanitation
- Many defecate in fields, ditches, buckets, and into plastic bags that litter the streets
- Women often wait until dark to fulfill their sanitation needs, which can be unsafe; girls often abandon school when menstruation begins
Millions also lack access to the minimum adequate daily quantity of clean water
- 884 million people (13% of the world’s population) do not have the 20 liters of clean water per day necessary to meet basic human needs
- On average, they live on less than 5 liters of unclean water per day–one-tenth of what the developed world uses merely to flush toilets
- Many draw water for consumption from ditches, rivers and lakes used by animals or polluted with excrement