Safe Water, Sanitation Saves Lives of Babies, Mothers by Wendy Koch

Dirty water and sewage have long been known to be health threats, but a United Nations report shows just how devastating their toll is on mothers and young children.

In a study of 193 countries released Thursday, Hamilton researchers say they’ve been able to quantify — for the first time — how safe water and public sanitation efforts affect health when factoring out other variables such as a nation’s wealth, fertility or location.

“The fact we can see a linear relationship ... was a surprising finding,” says coauthor June J. Cheng of McMaster University, which teamed with the United Nations University, the UN’s academic arm. The study, published in the British journal Environmental Health, analyzed data from 2008 to 2010, the most recent available.

The study found that countries ranking in the bottom fourth for access to safe water had 4.7 more deaths per 1,000 children under five years old than those in the top fourth.

The bottom quartile for access to adequate sanitation had 6.6 more deaths per 1,000 children under five years old compared to the top quartile.

Many less developed countries in Africa and South Asia, including India, score at the bottom for sanitation but show greater variation in their rankings for drinking water.

The odds of a mother dying within a year of giving birth jump 42 per cent from the top quartile to each lower tier if she doesn’t have safe water, and increase 48 per cent for each quartile if she lacks adequate sanitation, according to the study.

“That’s probably an underestimate,” says coauthor Susan Watt. She says mothers and babies often die in poor countries without their deaths being recorded because “they literally do not count.”

Watt says that while public health has emphasized improvements in prenatal care, “these data suggest we might have more impact if we focus on water and sanitation.”

Luke MacDonald, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Global Water Program, says the report “helps to quantify the mortality” due to lack of sanitation and safe water but doesn’t provide a “full picture” of how they affect health.

He says dirty water and sewage also cause illness and lost productivity.

Research by the World Health Organization estimates that almost 10 percent of global diseases could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene. Yet at the world’s current pace, prior UN studies say that by 2015, 2.7 billion people will still lack basic sanitation and 672 million won’t have safe water.

From thespec.com via USA Today