Message from Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland,
Director-General World Health Organization on World Water Day 22 March 2001
(Also on Audio/Video)
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends and Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure to address you today, on World Water Day on the importance of cherishing two of our most valuable resources which affect our very existence - Water and Health. Water and health are inter-linked in many ways and we must protect and enhance them both.
Access to safe water is a universal need and indeed considered a basic human right. It constitutes a fundamental component of primary health care. Yet today 1.1 billion people (18% of the world’s population) still do not even have access to improved sources of water and 2.4 billion do not have access to basic sanitation. As a direct consequence 2.2 million people die each year from diarrhoea – most of them children in developing countries. Many others also die from other diseases associated with lack of clean drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
Ill health is one of the major obstacles to poverty alleviation – both its cause and its consequence. Improving water management can be a powerful tool when used by individuals, communities and households to protect their own health. Involvement of people is essential for sustainable water management.
The promotion of hygiene supported by the provision of safe water supply and sanitation provides for an effective immediate health intervention and will help protect water resources from pollution. Therefore we will be able to virtually eliminate guinea worm disease in the very near future. The elimination of onchocerciasis or “river blindness” from most of West Africa, is proof that vector-borne diseases can be controlled through joint efforts. Control of schistosomiasis and Roll Back Malaria rely also upon sound water resources management.
I urge all of you to take a look around you today and think about how important clean water is to your health. Then think again about all the people in the world who are deprived of this most basic of all human needs; and ask yourself what we can do to ensure that in future everyone has access to safe water.
Thank you.