Poverty is not only a tragedy for each affected individual, it is a tragedy for us all: how many great thinkers, great achievers, die before they reach adulthood or spend their life living hand-to-mouth, never able to even begin to realize their potential?
In the developed world our greater health and longevity has little to do with medicine and much to do with clean, disease-free water, good sanitation and a healthy diet. With the most important being clean water — disease free to drink and fresh/desalinated for the crops.
Globally, an estimated 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhoeal diseases and of these some 1,800 deaths are linked to water, sanitation and hygiene.
— UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/media/media_68359.html)
With clean water most of those children survive, and they grow up to help their family farm the land and provide more food. In turn, their children have clean water and an even healthier diet, so they have the opportunity for an education.
In the developed world 2 billion of us struggle with the big issues of the day, issues well illustrated by the 2014 Longitude Prize. How much more progress could and would be made if we added in the other 5 billion?
Knock down the water issue first. Then, like dominoes, the others will follow.
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