Water and sanitation

Clean water: without it, people die. With only dirty water, diseases like typhoid and malaria are certain, and the threat of death is near.

Water Bangaldesh Girl Drinking
In Bangladesh, CARE is working with six local groups to provide hygiene and sanitation education programmes for their communities. We aim to help 160 local groupss deliver the same programmes.
©CARE/Von Beruth

More than one billion people in the world do not have clean water to drink. Two billion do not have adequate sanitation, like toilets.

CARE is improving water supplies, sanitation, domestic hygiene and stopping the spread of water-related diseases in poor communities.

Since 1950, we've helped an estimated 10 million people in 30 countries access safe drinking water.  In 2005, we provided safe water for some 730,000 people, including 140,000 in Gaza and the West Bank, and improved sanitation for more than 600,000 around the world.

Often people trapped in large city slums cannot get clean drinking water simply because local authorities or water companies have not installed water pipes.

Gaza water rights empowers Morten Hvaal in Meithaloun a tanker
In Gaza and the West Bank, some Palestinians live on as little as 40 litres per day, less than half the recommended daily amount for healthy living.
© Morten Hvaal/WpN 2005
As a result, poor people pay a higher proportion of their incomes buying packaged water and spend hours every day queuing for it, leaving them little time to earn a living and preventing children from going to school.

Every year more than two million people die because they do not have clean, safe drinking water.

6,000 children die every day from water-borne diseases, like diarrhoea, malaria and typhoid.

 

Donate now to help CARE provide clean water.