Unsafe water sources are responsible for 1.2 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.1 These estimates of the annual number of deaths attributed to a wide range of risk factors are shown here. This chart is shown for the global total, but can be explored for any country or region using the “change country” toggle.
Lack of access to safe water sources is a leading risk factor for infectious diseases, including cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.2 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.
According to the Global Burden of Disease study 1.2 people died prematurely in 2017 as a result of unsafe water. To put this into context: this was three times the number of homicides in 2017; and equal to the number that died in road accidents globally.