This paper examines the global clean water crisis, highlighting that 844 million people lack access to safe water and the devastating health consequences that follow, including the spread of cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, and other preventable diseases. The paper discusses the role of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) as a humanitarian organization equipped to address water access and sanitation challenges worldwide. Drawing on the organization's history, logistical infrastructure, and field operations — including its 2017 refugee response in Uganda — the paper argues that expanded access to clean water and sanitation is essential to reducing child and adult mortality rates globally.
Every human being on earth requires at least 20 to 50 liters of clean, safe water on a daily basis for drinking, cooking, and maintaining basic hygiene. Despite this fundamental need, clean water remains inaccessible to a staggering portion of the global population. Current statistics indicate that 1 in 9 individuals lacks access to clean and safe water, meaning approximately 844 million people across the globe are presently living without it. This shortage has produced a severe public health crisis, as the absence of safe water leads to poor sanitation, deteriorating health outcomes, and the accelerated spread of infectious diseases — consequences that ultimately drive up both child and adult mortality rates.
Statistics further indicate that every two minutes, a child dies from a water-related disease. If universal access to clean water and sanitation were achieved, there could be as much as $18.5 billion in annual economic benefits from averted deaths (Water.org). Safe and easily accessible water is essential for public health, whether used for drinking, domestic purposes, food production, or leisure. Improvements in water supply, sanitation, and water resource management can stimulate economic growth and contribute greatly to poverty reduction.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), contaminated water combined with poor sanitation is associated with the transmission of diseases including diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and polio. Absent, insufficient, or poorly managed water and sanitation services expose people to preventable health risks. This is especially true in healthcare settings, where patients and staff alike face heightened risk of infection and disease when water, sanitation, and hygiene services are lacking.
Approximately 840,000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhea caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hand hygiene. The particularly troubling aspect of this figure is that diarrhea is largely preventable. The deaths of 361,000 children under the age of five could be avoided annually if these risk factors were adequately addressed. In regions where water is not readily accessible, people may decide that handwashing is not a priority, further increasing the likelihood of diarrhea and other communicable diseases (World Health Organization).
As a nursing student and an advocate for universal health, I believe that ensuring access to clean and safe water for populations around the world would lead to a meaningful decline in both child and adult mortality rates. The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders — committed to providing medical care to people in distress — has played a pivotal role in responding to various disease outbreaks and can serve as a critical actor in addressing the global water crisis, from locating and delivering clean drinking water to building latrines and improving sanitation infrastructure (Wass and Southgate 441).
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) was founded in 1971 by 13 physicians and volunteers who were dissatisfied with the impartiality and neutral stance of the Red Cross. These founding members believed that people suffering from illness or injury had a right to medical intervention, and that the imperative to provide that help transcended national boundaries. They also felt obligated to raise awareness and advocate against injustice, even when doing so might offend government administrations.
One year after its founding, the organization undertook its first major relief effort, providing assistance to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. Subsequent major missions brought relief to victims of war in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and the Russian republic of Chechnya, among other nations (Doctors Without Borders). Since then, Doctors Without Borders has grown significantly, continuing to deliver relief to areas struck by famine, provide medical care to casualties of armed conflict, and assist refugees in numerous countries worldwide. In 2003, the organization was also a key partner in the founding of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, which works to develop medications for illnesses such as tuberculosis and malaria (Doctors Without Borders).
"Disaster kits, supply centers, and rapid response"
"MSF refugee response and water delivery in Uganda"
"How individuals can support MSF's work"
Fox, Renée C. Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Quests, Impossible Dreams of Médecins Sans Frontières. JHU Press, 2014.
Redfield, Peter. Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders. University of California Press, 2013.
Wass, Val, and Lesley Southgate. "Doctors Without Borders." Academic Medicine 92.4 (2017): 441–443.
Water.org. The Power of Water, 2018. Retrieved from:
World Health Organization. Drinking Water, 2018. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water
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