Public Health Matters: The next time you hear someone going on about how devastating AIDS has been for world health, remember this:

"More than half the hospital beds in the world are filled by people with water related diseases," Mr Brende said. "This clearly demonstrates the link between the water target and the health target."

Deaths from diarrhoeal diseases—such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, which can reach epidemic proportions—have dropped by 60% over the past 20 years. Diarrhoeal diseases remain a leading cause of death, however, claiming 1.8 million lives, mostly in children, in 2002, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.