Does Access to Water and Sanitation Affect Child Survival?

About 10 million children die every year, most of them from preventable diseases. Although chance plays its role in this tragedy, poor living conditions are the main cause of this event. Children living in houses with poor ventilation, rustic floors and unsafe windows are more likely to suffer an accident, a disease or early death. Access to water and sanitation is a large element of the definition of decent, safe housing. Moreover, access to water and sanitation has large direct and indirect impacts on children's health: Many of the most pervasive diseases are water related. The WHO estimates that water-related diseases account for 4% of all deaths and 5.7 % of the total disease burden (Pruss et all 2002). In this paper, we explore the linkages between types of water sources, sanitation facilities and mortality in the first year of life. For this, we use a set of household surveys -the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted by Macro International. As the name indicates, the DHS collect and monitor population, health and nutrition indicators.