A New Partnership to Improve Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Developing Countries

Published on by

The statistics around water, sanitation, and hygiene are daunting: 2.5 billion people worldwide still lack access to improved sanitation. Contaminated food and water cause up to 1.5 million deaths from diarrheal disease among children under five every year. Seventy percent of available freshwater resources worldwide are used for agriculture, often through inefficient and environmentally unsustainable means.
The good news is that the solutions to these challenges are changing. Innovators, governments, and donors are coming together to find new approaches that could dramatically change this water-scarce landscape. In 2011, USAID launched one such partnership between our Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) program and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The WASH for Life Partnership identifies and rigorously tests new WASH technologies and delivery models, then scales and replicates those that are proven successful. Source of the news http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2013/05/A-New-Partnership-to-Improve-Water-Sanitation-and-Hygiene-in-Developing-Countries