08/09/2026
Some of the best news in global health rarely makes the headlines.
Deaths from diarrhoeal disease have fallen by two-thirds since 1990 — from 3.7 million a year to 1.27 million. For children under five, the group most at risk, the drop is even steeper: from over 1 million deaths in 2000 to 317,000 in 2023.
Verdens Bedste Nyheder (World's Best News) interviewed Associate Professor Peter Kjær Mackie Jensen about why. The short answer: people are getting richer. Diarrhoea is a poverty disease. As countries like Bangladesh and India lift millions out of extreme poverty, families gain the things that quietly save lives — running water, proper toilets, a fridge, a clean surface to prepare food on. That, more than anything, is what bends the curve.
Two findings from 30 years of research on water and hygiene still stop people. Peter's team was the first to show that cholera — caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae — can be carried by flies. And separately, a single fly landing on food in a Dhaka slum deposits around 650 E. coli on average — a stark measure of how much faecal contamination flies move onto what people eat.
But the trend isn't guaranteed. Climate change is pushing people from the countryside into already-crowded cities — and crowding is exactly what enteric disease thrives on. We can't assume the curve keeps bending the right way on its own.
Worth a read (in Danish).
Færre mennesker på verdensplan dør af sygdomme, der giver diarré. Verden over er der blevet investeret massivt i ordentlige toiletter, rent vand og bedre køkkener.
Læs mere her: https://verdensbedstenyheder.dk/nyheder/kaempe-arbejde-for-rent-vand-og-toiletter-redder-liv-millioner-af-boern-overlever-nu-doedelig-diarre/
