GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Poor water supply and sanitation cause a "silent humanitarian crisis" that kills some 3,900 children daily, a report says.
An article published in this week's issue of The Lancet, by the World Health Organization's Jamie Bartram and colleagues, says poor sanitation and a lack of safe drinking water do more human damage than war, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction combined.
The problem is said to be particularly acute in east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The article calls for immediate concerted efforts to confront the reality that sanitation coverage rates in the developing world barely keep pace with population growth. Four out of 10 people in the world do not have access to a simple pit latrine.
This is the fifth in a series of papers summarizing the key conclusions of a three-year U.N.-backed effort to address extreme poverty with quantitative targets set for the year 2015.
