People need clean water and sanitation to sustain their health and maintain their dignity. Water also sustains ecological systems and provides an input into the production systems that maintain livelihoods. Water pervades all aspects of human development and human freedom. Water security is an integral part of this broader conception of human security. In broad terms water security is about ensuring that every person has reliable access to enough safe water at an affordable price to lead a healthy, dignified and productive life, while maintaining the ecological systems that provide water and also depend on water. When these conditions are not met, or when access to water is disrupted, people face acute human security risks transmitted through poor health and the disruption of livelihoods and vulnerability. Clean water and sanitation are among the most powerful drivers for human development. They extend opportunity, enhance dignity and help create a virtuous cycle of improving health and rising wealth. Some 2.6 billion people— half the developing world’s population— do not have access to basic sanitation. And systemic data underreporting means that these figures understate the problem. “Not having access” to water and sanitation is a polite euphemism for a form of deprivation that threatens life, destroys opportunity and undermines human dignity.
Deprivation in water and sanitation produces multiplier effects. The ledger includes the following costs for human development:
1. Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea—4,900 deaths each day or an under-five population equivalent in size to that for London and New York combined. Diarrhoea, estimated to be responsible for 12 % of the child deaths under five years of age in developing countries. Deaths from diarrhoea in 2004 were some six times greater than the average annual deaths in armed conflict for the 1990s. Together, unclean water and poor sanitation is the world’s second biggest killer of children.
2. The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
3. Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
4. Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.
5. Lifecycles of disadvantage affecting millions of people, with illness and lost educational opportunities in childhood leading to poverty in adulthood.
Every year, unsafe water, coupled with a lack of basic sanitation, kills at least 1.6 million children under the age of five years and more than eight times the number of people who died in the Asian tsunami of 2004. At the beginning of the Water for Life decade, 1.1 billion people did not have access to an improved source of drinking water, 84% of the population without access to an improved source of drinking water live in rural areas. 2.6 billion people, more than 40% of the world population, do not use a toilet, but defecate in the open or in unsanitary places. In 2004, more than three out of every five rural people, over 2 billion, did not have access to a basic sanitation facility. If the current trend persists, nearly 1.7 billion rural dwellers will still not have access to improved sanitation by 2015.
Bangladesh has a population of about 144 million in an area of 147,570 square kilometers with as many as 1,800 people living per square kilometer. Forty per cent of the population lives under the poverty line. An estimate puts the total population at 181 million by 2025 with 41% living in the urban areas - nearly half of them will be poor without services. In Bangladesh up to 40% of overall morbidity is due to water and sanitation related disease in some communities. In the year 2000, 12.1% DALYS were lost due to Diarrhoeal disease and 90% of these were attributable to environmental causes of which 65% could be averted through improvements in water supply, environmental sanitation (latrines, drainage, rubbish disposal) and hygiene awareness. Diarrhoeal diseases account for 11% of total deaths in Bangladesh due to Water pollution, unsafe drinking water and Lack of hygiene and poor sanitation. According to WHO, 1998 They account for the high infant mortality rates - 15% of U5MR. The most alarming and interesting fact is Hygiene related disease costs the country, Tk 5 billion (£30million) per year for treatment alone. According to the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authorities, the ground water table -- the source of drinking water for one third of this city's 10 million people -- has become contaminated with harmful bacteria.
Bangladesh is grappling with the largest mass poisoning of a population in history because groundwater used for drinking has been contaminated with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. It is estimated that of the 125 million inhabitants of Bangladesh between 35 million and 77 million are at risk of drinking contaminated water The scale of this environmental disaster is greater than any seen before; it is beyond the accidents at Bhopal, India, in 1984, and Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.
Arsenic in groundwater poses a great challenge to the water supply in the country. Since the detection of arsenic in 1993, various organisations have been screening tube wells for arsenic contamination in excess of the Bangladesh Drinking Water Standard (BDWS) of 0.05mg/L. The most contaminated areas lie in the southern region, in the districts of Chandpur, Comilla, Noakhali, Munshiganj, Faridpur, Madaripur, Gopalganj, Shariatpur and Satkhira. Excessive levels have also been found in the South West and part of the North West, North East and North Central regions. Arsenic-contaminated drinking-water: a public health emergency. Exposure to arsenic from drinking water increases the risk of skin, lung and bladder cancer and possibly that of other sites also. In a report WHO has predicted that in most of the southern part of Bangladesh almost 1 in every 10 adult deaths will be a result of cancer triggered by Arsenic poisoning in the next decade (Contamination of drinking-water by arsenic in Bangladesh: a public health emergency -Alan H. Smith, Elena O. Lingas & Mahfuzar Rahman). From the experience of Taiwan it has been forecasted that almost two million of people are at risk of developing cancer in the next decades. Large numbers of cancers are predicted to occur in the future, including fatal internal cancers. The cause is known: each day of continued exposure increases the risk of morbidity and death Sustained drinking of water containing 500 mg/l of arsenic may result in 1 in 10 people dying from arsenic-related cancers. Unlike other major health problems experienced in Bangladesh, arsenic-caused diseases can be eradicated at relatively low cost.
Safe water and sanitation is primary factors for every aspects of successfulness of society. So it’s very much important to concern about these unless country will give value not only for present but also for future generation.
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