Shortage of Clean Drinking Water

1. Three Quantitative Examples of Specific Problems
a. Among the total global population of 663 million people, statistics reveal that 1 in 10 lacks access to safe water. According to World Health Organization (WHO), at present approximately 1.8 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with feces.
b. Indian women is said to be worst hit by water as a large portion of women population living in rural area walk over 2.5 kms to reach water sources. In other words, on average, a rural Indian woman goes over 14,000 km a year just to get water despite of the installation more than 3.5 million hand pumps and over 116 thousand piped water supply schemes (Relief Med, 2016).
c. United Nations General Assembly realizes the daily requirement of water for domestic and personal use per person a day is between 50 to 100 liters. They calculated that accessibility to the safe drinking water should be accessible to everyone and a water source should be within 1000 meters of home with collection time of maximum 30 minutes only (United Nation, 2015).

2. Three Quantitative Examples of Major Outcomes
a. Shortage of drinking water can cost up to 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDPs) in some of the global regions such as Central Africa and East Asia by 2050. The decline can be attributed to the water related decline in the agriculture, health and income (World Bank, 2016).
b. The use of contaminated water and shortage of water lead to 502000 diarrheal deaths annually. According to WHO, the mortality rate includes deaths of 361 000 children aged under 5, which could be prevented by focus on proper drinking water, sanitation and hygiene condition worldwide (World Health Organisation, 2015).
c. Khodarahimi, Boogar, & Johnston, (2014) have confirmed the statistically significant impacts of the drinking water scarcity on the psychological and mental illness among the rural people living without water in Iran as compared to rural people living with water. Mental Somatic complaints (29.2% v. 1.2%), anxiety (27.8% v. 1.1%), social dysfunction (51.7% v. 1.3%), depression (11.6% v. 0.2%), perceived stress (10.7% v. 0.6%) were reported (Khodarahimi, Boogar, & Johnston, 2014).

References
Khodarahimi, S., Boogar, A. R., & Johnston, C.-a. (2014). The Role of Drinking Water Shortages on Human Psychological Functioning. Current World Environment, 9(2) , 244-250.
Relief Med. (2016, May 03). Indian Women Worst Hit by Water Crisis. Retrieved August 09, 2016, from Relief Med: http://m.reliefweb.int/report/1509971/india/indian-women-worst-hit-by-water-crisis
United Nation. (2015). Water. Retrieved August 08, 2016, from United Nation: United Nation
World Bank. (2016, May 03). Climate-Driven Water Scarcity Could Hit Economic Growth by Up to 6 Percent in Some Regions, Says World Bank. World Bank .
World Health Organisation. (2015). Drinking-water. Retrieved August 09, 2016, from World Health Organisation.

Anqi Zheng