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Water and sanitation: the silent emergency.

Article Excerpt
In December 2006, the UN General Assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation. The intention was to raise awareness of the importance of sanitation and encourage Governments, partners and communities to embrace the need for urgent action to reduce the number of people living without this basic service.

The declaration could not have been timelier or more welcome. At the midpoint in the time frame to achieve the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include targets to halve the proportion of people living without sanitation and water by 2015, it is clear that investment to reach these targets is seriously insufficient. However, with seven years to go, there is still time to reverse the situation and reap the substantial potential rewards of taking action to meet the MDGs.

Current investment would need to be increased by $10 billion a year for the sanitation and water targets to be met. (1) But sanitation, perhaps the most off-track of all the Goals, is suffering acutely from under-investment. There are 2.6 billion people, or 42 per cent of the world's population, without improved sanitation. (2) If the present trend...

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