While most of us leave our faucets open and the water running while we brush our teeth, fail to fix faulty plumbing, and spend sometimes as long as half an hour standing under the shower, over one billion people of this same planet continue to lack access to a safe water source. Not only that, but half of the developing world’s population lacks access to any source of improved sanitation.

It’s difficult for us to imagine what life is like for those billions who do not have running water in their homes, and are forced to resort to using what is usually a polluted water source for drinking, bathing, and washing. Without a proper sanitation system, even those that have potable running water in their homes find themselves using polluted water. Women without a sanitation system in their homes will commonly resort to washing clothes, dishes, children and even animals in public waterways, where it is easier to dispose of wastewater. This forms a source of pollution to the very water they are using. The seepage of sewage from improperly built underground septic tanks into the surrounding soil also has a negative impact on groundwater. And when water is provided without providing a parallel sanitation system, the amount of sewage increases, increasing the pollution of groundwater.

The vicious circles are endless. If people are not provided with a means to dispose of their solid waste, it might very well end up thrown in the local waterways, in the belief that the running water will remove it and have a cleansing effect. If people’s water sources are polluted, they expose themselves to contracting a wide array of diseases such as diarrhea that kills an estimated 1.8 million people every year, malaria that kills 1.3 million people annually, bilharziasis that infects 160 million annually, and trachoma which 500 million people are at risk of contracting every year.

These problems are not as far away from us as we believe. More than 900 million people in the world, comprising 43 percent of the urban population of developing countries, live in slums in our very own cities. Many of these people do not have a safe source of drinking water, nor do they have a suitable sanitation system.

The international community has turned into a beehive of activity to solve these problems. Promises have been made by the countries of the world to halve the number of people lacking water and sanitation by the year 2015. Water experts are networking, exchanging information, and exchanging positive experiences to alleviate the situation in as short a period possible. Non-governmental organizations are providing people living in both rural and informal urban settlements with small-scale and low-cost sustainable approaches to solve their problems. The media is becoming more and more aware of the importance of covering water and sanitation issues. Religious leaders are becoming more involved in addressing these issues in their mosques, churches, and synagogues. And for all of these, no rest will come until they have reached their goal.

IslamOnline.net, in its belief in the important role the media can play in creating awareness of water and sanitation problems and solutions, has created this special water page. The important role that people can play is highlighted in the section titled People Power. For more general information on water issues, visit our Water Knowledge section. In order to understand why water is such an important issue needing drastic solutions, you can visit our When Things Go Wrong section. Water and sanitation must go hand in hand, to understand more about this, you can visit our Sanitation for Life section. And water is important in all world religions. Our Water as a Matter of Faith section deals with this important aspect in the belief systems of the world.