Millennium Development Goal Seven

Target: By 2015, halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

• The world, except sub-Saharan Africa, is on track to meet the MDG target on water, but at the current rate will miss the sanitation target by over 700 million people.
• Eighty-seven per cent of the global population now uses an improved source of drinking water, compared to 77% in 1990.
• Huge disparities exist between regions: while access to drinking water through a household connection in rural areas is as low as 5% in sub-Saharan Africa, it is much higher in Eastern Asia (62%), North Africa (63%) and Western Asia (57%).
• In sub-Saharan Africa 28% of the population does not have access to any form of sanitation and has the largest population using unimproved water sources.
• More than 2.5 billion people remain without improved sanitation. Almost 1.8 billion of them – 70% - live in Asia.
• One child dies approximately every 20 seconds from diarrhoea. About 90% of those deaths could be prevented through safer water, sanitation and hygiene practices, according to the WHO.

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