Thursday 27 September 2012

Water, Water Everywhere But Is It safe To Drink?

I woke up this morning, sat up in bed and switched on my TV to be greeted by a news story about the number of people that die each day because they do not have access to clean drinking water. 

I thought to myself, “what century are we living in?”  

Is it not about time, on a global level, that everyone should pull together to ensure that this fundamental resource is available to every human being on the planet? 

Two minutes of research identified that, according to the united Nations, 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. This is roughly one in ten of the world's population. Furthermore, over 2.6 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation systems.

On average 2,000 children die a day from being denied this basic human right and nescessity of clean and safe drinking water!   

I know Water Aid have done an enormous amount of work and a quick look on their website revealed that for every $1 invested in water and sanitation, an average of $4 is returned in increased productivity, not to mention the millions of lives it saves.

Scientists have recently discovered the Higgs boson, is it not about time that the great minds of this world create a widget/device/system that is cheap and simple to solve this problem. 

I’m not a scientist and I don’t know how to invent such a widget/device/system, so come on clean technologists, there must be something or someone out there that is working on a solution. 

Please send in links, feeds, stories or anything you can about research and/or technology looking into a solution. This situation has to be addressed now, as a matter of urgency and the public must be made aware of this atrocious and unconscionable situation. 

Rant over.