Clean Water

this graph was created in OurDataWorld:

Access to clean water is one of our most basic human needs.

But, one in four people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. This is a major health risk. Unsafe water is responsible for more than a million deaths each year.

In this article, we look at data on access to safe water and its implications for health worldwide.

Unsafe water is a leading risk factor for death
Unsafe water sources are responsible for over one million deaths each year
Unsafe water is one of the world's largest health and environmental problems – particularly for the poorest in the world.

The Global Burden of Disease is a major global study on the causes and risk factors for death and disease published in the medical journal The Lancet. These estimates of the annual number of deaths attributed to a wide range of risk factors are shown here.

Lack of access to safe water sources is a leading risk factor for infectious diseases, including cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio.1 It also exacerbates malnutrition and, in particular, childhood stunting. In the chart, we see that it ranks as a very important risk factor for death globally.