Giving Compass' Take:

• According to the World Health Organization and the U.N., two billion people lack clean water at health facilities, which poses significant risk for birthing mothers and newborns. 

• How can donors work with global development organizations to address clean water issues? 

• Clean water for all starts with technology. 

A quarter of the world's health facilities lack basic water services, impacting 2 billion people, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning that unhygienic conditions could fuel the global rise of deadly superbugs.

In the poorest countries, about half of facilities do not have basic water services — meaning water delivered by pipes or boreholes that protect it from faeces — putting birthing mothers and newborns in particular danger, new data showed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said more than 1 million deaths a year were associated with unclean births, and 15% of all patients attending a health facility developed infections.

"Hospitals are not necessarily points of care where you can heal, but points of almost infection. [We] are very alarmed by this," WHO public health co-ordinator Bruce Gordon told a media briefing in Geneva.

Worldwide, nearly 900 million people have no water at all at their local health facility or have to use unprotected wells or springs. One in five facilities also lack toilets, impacting about 1.5 billion people, the agencies said.

The agencies said good water and sanitation services were crucial to reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance, one of the greatest global health threats.

International charity WaterAid said rising rates of superbugs had been linked to poor sanitary conditions in health facilities which lead to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

Read the full article about water shortage at health facilities by Emma Batha at Global Citizen.