May 23, 2013: A new international study published in The Lancet provides the clearest picture yet of the impact and most common causes of diarrheal diseases, the second leading killer of young children globally, after pneumonia.

Apr 12, 2013: The Lancet Series on Childhood Pneumonia and Diarrhoea, led by Aga Khan University, Pakistan, provides evidence for integrated control efforts for childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea. The first paper assesses the global burden of these two illnesses, comparing and contrasting them, and includes new estimates of severe disease and updated mortality estimates for 2011. Findings from the second paper show that a set of highly cost-effective interventions can prevent most diarrhoea deaths and nearly two thirds of pneumonia deaths by 2025, if delivered at scale.

Washington, Apr 20, 2013: One out of every three people in the world today have no toilet, the World Bank said today.

April 2013: The Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD), a new global plan from UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), represents the first-ever simultaneous effort to protect children from pneumonia and diarrhoea, the two leading killer diseases of children less than five years old.

Beijing, Apr 1, 2013: Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide.
Figured another way, the researchers said, China’s toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population.

November 2012: Diseases associated with poor sanitation cause a large burden of disease worldwide. Diarrhoea alone causes an estimated 4 billion cases and 1.9 million deaths each year among children under 5 years, or 19% of all under-5 deaths in low income settings [1]. Other major diseases associated with poor sanitation are soil-transmitted worm infections, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis and schistosomiasis [2]. In contrast to other Millennium Development Goals, sanitation coverage remains low with 2.5 billion people still lacking access to sanitation.

Jan.

Afghanistan, Jan. 6, 2013: According to available figures, about 73 percent of people in Afghanistan lack access to clean drinking water and 95 percent do not have access to sufficient sanitation. As a result, diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for the death of 48,545 children every year in the country.

Lack of access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a chronic problem not only in rural areas, but also in most of the Afghan cities which are developing — unplanned — at a rapid rate.

Islamabad, Nov. 20, 2012: Lack of access to a clean and private toilet can expose individuals to the risk of disease. But the taboo attached to ‘toilet talk’ is the biggest hurdle in addressing sanitation issues to decrease the prevalence of diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis, which annually kill over 40,000 children in Pakistan alone.

Mumbai, Oct. 16, 2012: India loses Rs 69,000 crore a year—more than twice the sum of Rs 34,488 crore it set aside for the country's health budget in 2012—to small infections. What's more, an estimated 38 crore of its citizens catch small infections with the result that they lose 162 crore workdays every year.