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Home > Get Involved > Chicago Home > 3 Minute Expert

3 Minute Expert: WATER
Expanding Your World Vision

Overview
One of the greatest resources in our world is water. Water is one of the necessary means for individuals to complete duties such as cleaning clothes, bathing, cooking, irrigating crops, and nourishing livestock. Water is also essential for a community to develop, grow and function. Access to clean water can help a community and a country flourish. Sadly, contaminated water continues to devastate communities through the spread of waterborne diseases and parasites. In communities where water is sparse women are forced to walk miles to collect water, community members remain sick and the number of individuals living in abject poverty increases at a deadly rate. Water is a precious resource that no one can live without; nevertheless many people continue to lack access to clean water.
  • 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water
  • 80 countries around the world experience serious water shortages
  • Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water related illness
  • In the past ten years diarrhea has killed more children than all those lost to armed conflict in almost sixty years

Effects on Public Health
Contaminated water has a detrimental impact on the human body. There are four types of water related diseases that are caused from unhygienic water; water-born infections are caused from water that has been contaminated by feces, this type of contamination typically occurs during a flood and results in hepatitis A, typhoid, cholera and diarrhoeal infections. Water-related disease are caused by insect vectors that feed or breed in contaminated water which infects 400 million individuals with malaria and 17 million infections of onchocerciasis or river blindness every year. Water-based diseases result from parasites and cause over 100 thousand people every year to suffer from guinea worm and 200 million to be sick with schistosomiasis, a chronic disease affecting the skin caused by parasites. Not having access to any water can have serious effects on the body. Dehydration, scabies and trachoma are some of these effects.

Our Basic Human Rights
According to Article 25 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family. Not having access to clean water violates a basic human right under this declaration. Organizations like the World Health Organization are working with the United Nations to uphold the human rights of all people through the millennium development goals.

What Can You Do?

  • SIGN UP for Chicago's Water for Life Rally
  • PRAY for children and families in need of clean water
  • TEACH your family and friends about this global crisis

World Vision in Chicago
5001 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60644
p.773.921.3900
f.773.921.3953




World Vision is working with communities around the world to:

> Promote the health of children

> Construct and repair wells and piping systems

> Purify and protect rainwater and natural springs

> Provide improved sanitation facilities

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