As is generally known, gastro-enterological infections make many people sick in
the de-veloping countries, and especially many infants die of gastro-enteritis.
This graph has been plotted for Japan, starting around 1945 up to 1990 for ever
y five years (see Figure 6). In the very beginning, that is around the World Wa
r ll, there were many deaths due to gastro-enteritis, those are infections in t
he stomach and intestines. The black diamonds represent pneumonia and bronchiti
s, and the white circles show the piped out water supply ratio. We could get ho
ld of data only from around 1955, which by that time had not reached 50 percent
. After that the piped water supply rate went up sub-stantially, and around 198
0 it has reached 90 percent. By now it is 95 percent. So there has been a subst
antial reduction of deaths due to gastro-enteritis. And by 1980, it comes almos
t close to zero, there were no deaths due to gastro-enteritis. And so you can s
ee that deaths due to gastro-enteritis are reduced the more you can use clean w
ater. Also pneu-monia decreases with the increase in piped water supply, but it
reaches a sort of bottom and didn't go down further, and probably it is increa
sing. Pneumonia is not only related to clean water, but there are many other fa
ctors that are involved. On the other hand clean water and gastro-enteritis are
very intimately related. The fact that pneumonia is on the rise in Japan is be
cause its society is aging and that we now have more elderly people.
