Lack of soap means illness, death for millions of children

Post date: Dec 29, 2011 9:19:42 AM

It still makes Fatoma Dia's eyes widen whenever the Hilton hotel cleaning worker sees a bar of barely used soap on a bathroom counter.

"This," she says, picking it up with a gloved hand and dropping it in a brown bucket, "is valuable where I come from."

The 35-year-old grew up in a mountainous region of southern Sudan where soap can cost more than a day's wages. Because some in the region, could not wash, they got sick.

Across the globe, 2.4 billion people do not have access to clean sanitation, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 1.5 million children die every year because their immune systems are not mature enough to battle diarrheal and respiratory diseases spread in contaminated environments.

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Source: By Ashley Fantz, CNN