Waterborne diseases are illnesses brought on by tiny organisms like viruses and bacteria that are consumed through polluted water or by coming into touch with feces. These illnesses would not exist if everyone on the earth could practice proper sanitation, hygiene, and access to clean water.
Unsafe water is one of the biggest health and environmental issues in the world. Inaccessibility of safe drinking water is a major risk factor for many infectious diseases like dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, etc. In this chart, we can clearly see that 1.23 million deaths occur annually because of unsafe water sources. According to the Global Burden of Disease research, contaminated water caused 1.2 million premature deaths in 2017. To put this in perspective, consider that this was equivalent to the number of people killed in road accidents worldwide and was three times the number of homicides in 2017.Â
This graph shows the percentage of worldwide deaths each year (from 1990 to 2020) that are linked to contaminated water.
Death rates are higher in low-income countries when compared to countries with higher incomes.