Thursday, 28 February 2008

Over 200,000 children die in water-borne diseases in East Asia

chinaview.cn
2008-02-26

BALI, Indonesia, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- Over 200,000 children died in East Asia per year and a half of them were in Indonesia, due to water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, the World Bank said here Tuesday.

Almud Weitz, regional team Leader of WB's Water and Sanitation Program in East Asia and the Pacific, said that the diseases were caused by poor sanitation.

"The number of children die per year is about 200,000 in east Asia. That is a lot. Over 100,000 of them are in Indonesia," she said at a Media Workshop here.

The leader said that the fatality related with the lack of access to sanitation, which affects 800 million to one billion people in the region.

The countries which signed the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have agreed to halve the number of people who do not get access to sanitation by 2015, according to Weitz.

However, Weitz said that basically the sanitation statistic in East Asia including Indonesia, was not so bad to start for improvement, compared with other region.

The United Nations has declared that this year is as the year of sanitation. Indonesia is one the four most populated countries in the world, with over 240 million population.
 
Editor: An Lu

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