Water is an essential natural resource for life, dignity and health of the human being, and a basic element for the development of the human activities, social, cultural or economic ones.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 30% of the world’s population, around 2,250 million people, does not have safe access to drinking water. In Latin America, Peru is the country with the highest level of inequality in access to drinking water. This asymmetry harms the health of families that do not have clean water and are exposed to diseases such as diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, cholera, among others; reverberating in their physical and intellectual development. In Peru, contaminated water is one of the main causes of morbidity and death.
The Peruvian coastal area concentrates most of the population and presents an increasing growth water deficit, aggravated by various natural factors and by human action. In the capital, more than 1 million people lack drinking water. According to the National Water Authority (ANA), Lima suffers water shortage due to inefficient management and distribution, corruption, demographic expansion and climate change.
The inequity in the distribution of water resources hit the pockets of the poorest families living in the human settlements of the capital such as Comas or Pamplona Alta, where a family spends S /. 90 per month for the water supplied by the tankers. According to the National Superintendence of Sanitation Services (SUNASS), a household that does not have potable water pays six times more than one with access to this resource.
Guillermo Gutierrez Photography
Guillermo Gutierrez is a Professional Photojournalist and Documentary Photographer based in Madrid-Spain.