 In
2000, just 10 years after the end of the Water and
Sanitation Decade, the lack of access to safe water
remains a problem for more than a billion people in
the developing world. Annually, 2 to 3 million children
less than 5 years old die of diarrheal diseases, a
large proportion of which are acquired through exposure
to contaminated water. In addition, after 39 years,
the 7th pandemic of cholera continues unabated, claiming
the lives of a high percentage of children and adults
who acquire the disease.
There are a number of reasons for the
persistence of these problems in spite of the investment
of billions of dollars in safe water by donor agencies
and governments. Population shifts from rural to urban
areas have stressed existing water and sanitary infrastructure
and exceeded the capacity of most countries to keep
up with demand. Large population dislocations caused
by armed conflict and natural disasters have created
enormous logistical problems in providing water and
sanitation services, as have dispersed populations
and poor transportation infrastructure in many rural
areas.
While larger scale projects, such as
the construction of deep wells or piped water systems,
remain an important objective of many development
agencies, a shortage of time and resources will leave
hundreds of millions of people without access to safe
water into the foreseeable future. To help bridge
the enormous gap in developing countries between populations
served by existing water projects and those most in
need, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) and the Pan American Health Organization developed
the Safe Water System, a simple, inexpensive, adaptable,
and flexible intervention that employs technologies
appropriate for the developing world.
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