Reuters: 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation: U.N. report

[DeepModem Mom]

2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation: U.N. report
Thu Sep 28, 2006
By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Some 2.6 billion people in the world, mainly in Africa and Asia, lack access to basic sanitation, increasing the risk of diarrhea and other diseases fatal to children, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.

UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, in a study on water and sanitation in developing nations, concluded that U.N. goals could be met on clean water, especially in urban areas, but the same was not true for access to the crudest of toilets.

The report, Progress for Children, surveyed available clean water and sanitation facilities from 1990 to 2004 and calculated which countries could meet goals set at a U.N. Millennium summit in 2000.

These include cutting in half by 2015 the proportion of people without safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

"Despite commendable progress, an estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still do not have access to an improved water supply and over 980 million do not have access to adequate sanitation, said Anne Veneman, UNICEF's executive director and a former U.S. secretary of agriculture....

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=2006-09-28T124023Z_01_N28287064_RTRUKOC_0_US-UN-SANITATION.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

[The2ndWheel]

1. I really wish humanity would just slow the hell down

But, we'll find a way to fix this problem, only creating an even bigger problem.

I hate saying that as a healthy white guy living in the US, but we all needed to put our foot on the break a long time ago and think about what we're doing and where we're going. Nobody did, and nobody will. We will do our best to cure nature.

[moondust]

2. The Bush Solution.

Bomb the hell out of them before they become terrists!

[dkofos]

3. That is nearly half the worlds population

Without a pot to piss in

We are so lucky in this country to have $2billion a week to piss away in Iraq