Hopes for improvements in water and sanitation in developing countries are bleak, an all-party Commons committee of MPs has warned.
The International Development Committee said that without concerted global action, the target seeking to halve the number of people without access to water by 2015 will be missed in Africa and on current trends the sanitation target will not be met until 2076.
The MPs' report said failure to meet these targets would compromise the likely achievement of all eight Millennium Development Goals.
Yet sanitation and water sit at the heart of the international development aims.
Millennium Development Goal 7, seeking to halve the number of people without access to water and basic sanitation by 2015, is integral to the achievement of all the other Goals.
The report highlights that proper sanitation and water provision vastly reduces global disease and brings children, especially girls, into school.
Women are also released from the wretched daily burden of fetching water, and the supply of food increases with adequate irrigation.
The report warns that sanitation is currently neglected within the Department for International Development and needs urgent attention.
Committee chairman Malcolm Bruce (Lib Dem, Gordon) said: "Almost one in two people in the developing world lacks access to sanitation. This is a hidden international scandal that is killing millions of children every year.
"DFID must reconfigure its staff and structures to enable it to step up as a global champion for sanitation."
