How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

by Bjørn Lomborg

The story of water and sanitation is one of success and failure. The world has met the Millennium Development Goal on the provision of clean drinking water five years early, but is set to miss its goal on basic sanitation by almost one billion people. An astonishing one-third of the world population, 2.5 billion people, lacks access to basic sanitation. More than one billion people must defecate out in the open rather than using the toilets that we take for granted in the developed world. Inadequate sanitation is much more than an inconvenience. It costs lives. It caused a cholera outbreak in Haiti in late 2010 that has now made 500,000 people sick and killed 7,000. Smaller cholera outbreaks are still commonplace during the rainy season in Bangladesh and the low-lying parts of many African cities. Diarrheal diseases are still a leading cause of death for children under 5, second only to respiratory infections. The World Bank concludes that the economic impact of poor sanitation can be as high as 7 percent of GDP for some Asian countries and close to 1 to 2 percent of GDP for African countries.

cholera is such a disgusting disease- shitting and vomiting up shit in water, only to drink from the exact same pool of water. Water filtration is an absolutely necessary pillar for stability.