Haiti leads the Western hemisphere in both infant and small child mortality. In 2009, nearly 60 out of every 1,000 children died at birth; 1 of every 10 children born in Haiti will die before the age of 5. The leading cause of these high mortality rates in children is water borne diseases and complications from malnourishment that comes from drinking unsafe water.
Highlighted below are a number of diseases that Haitians face due to poor water quality:
The quality of drinking water also has a more subtle influence on the person: namely on the Human Cognitive Development. Some studies have shown that literacy, the key to education, correlates heavily to development. Proper nutrition, especially small child nutrition, heavily affects brain development and thus a child’s ability to learn how to read and write. In addition to the educational barriers caused by malnutrition, illness prevents children from attending school, leading to an inevitable spiral to poverty in the future. The lack of clean drinking water contributes to the fact that 48.8% of the Haitian population over 15 cannot read or write.