Water

The WASH sector bears a heavy burden of overall diseases and morbidity by causing multiple types of diseases, so-called water-related diseases. The WHO estimates that diarrhea alone, the most frequent water-related disease, is responsible for 4.2% of the global disease burden, which places diarrhea as the 5th highest burden of diseases on a global scale. Other diseases related to poor WASH include trachoma, schistosomiasis, ascariasis, trichuriasis, hookworm disease, malaria and Japanese encephalitis. It must be underlined that children bear the greatest share of this health burden.

Furthermore, water-related diseases are closely related to nutrition. Children with poor nutritional status are more prone to illness and in particular chronic diarrhea, which in turn increases the nutritional deficiencies. On the other hand, repeated bouts of diarrhea or other water-related diseases can lead to nutritional deficiencies. The other causal relationship of nutrition to water and health is through irrigation agriculture. The use of wastewater to irrigation agriculture has health repercussions though it would contribute to water use efficiency.