• Water-borne diseases are responsible for 80-percent of illnesses and deaths in the developing world, killing a child every 15 seconds.  
• Every day 4,400 children under the age of 5 die around the world, having fallen sick due to a lack of safe drinking water and sanitation.
• Five times as many children die each year of diarrhea than of HIV/AIDS.
• A third of the world's population is enduring some form of water scarcity.
• One in every six human beings has no access to clean water within a kilometer of their homes.
• Half of all people in developing countries have no access to proper sanitation.
• Half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-borne diseases.
• More than two-thirds of those without clean water survive on less than $2 a day.
• In some places, women have to walk nearly 10 kilometers to reach a water source.
• Millions of school days are lost as a result of girls dropping out of school because they must fetch water or because there are inadequate sanitary facilities in schools.
• Today, 800 million people live under a threshold of "water stress." That figure will rise to 3 billion in 2025, especially in parts of Asia and Africa.
• Many countries have to import more than half of their food needs because they do not have enough water to grow more food.
• Within 25 years, half of the world's population could have trouble finding enough freshwater for drinking and irrigation.  

To find out more about these statistics, the global crisis, and the Millienneum Development Goals, please visit the United Nations’ website www.un.org/millenniumgoals.