The Associated Press reported Tuesday on the achievement of a U.N. goal of cutting in half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water five years ahead of the 2015 target.
A report issued by the U.N. children’s agency and the World Health Organization said over 2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2010.
That means 89 percent of the world’s population, or 6.1 billion people, had access to safe water sources at the end of 2010 — one percent more than the goal of 88 percent set by world leaders at the U.N. Millennium Summit in 2000, the report said.
But UNICEF and WHO said victory can’t be declared because 783 million people — 11 percent of the global population — still have no ready access to safe drinking water
Senator Chris Coons, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, praised the milestone but remains vigilant about expanding access to safe drinking water in Africa, which has some of the lowest levels of access anywhere in the world.
Only 61 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa have access to safe drinking water sources compared with 90 percent or more in Latin America and the Caribbean, northern Africa, and large parts of Asia, the report said.
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