LAGOS, Nigeria — A growing water and sanitation crisis cause nearly two million child deaths every year in Africa and other developing countries, a report by the United Nations in 2006 has said. The report is captioned by the Human development group as ‘Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water scarcity’, cuts across most of the developing world, especially Africa. ‘Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict. Each year, the authors report, 1.8 million children die from diarrhoea diseases that could be prevented with access to clean water and a toilet; 443 million school days are lost to water-related illnesses; and almost 50 percent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from at least one health problem caused by a lack of water and sanitation. In addition to direct human suffering, the crisis in water and sanitation holds back economic growth, with sub-Saharan Africa losing five percent of gross domestic product (GDP) annually, far more than the region receives in aid,’ the Human development group stated. The report released through the United States embassy in Abuja, also states in […]