Study: African Countries Failing to Meet UN Sanitation Goals

Posted November 18th, 2011 at 6:35 am (UTC-5)
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A new study by an international charity group says nearly all sub-Saharan countries are failing to meet the U.N. Millennium Development goal of reducing by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation services by 2015.

The UK-based WaterAid group said Friday in a report titled “Off-track, off-target” that the sub-Saharan region would take over two centuries to meet that goal at its current pace.

The report said that 2,000 sub-Saharan African children die every day from diarrhea resulting from a lack of proper sanitation and clean water.

The group is urging donor countries to provide an additional $10 billion per year for improved water, sanitation and hygiene services in the run up to 2015.

In 2000, the United Nations set out the Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious plan to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease by 2015.

A U.N. progress report released in 2011 said the world is on track to achieve many of the goals, but that much of the world's poorest people are still being left behind, particularly in the areas of sanitation and access to clean water.