Alabama’s poverty and sewage system problems are some of the worst in the developed world, a United Nations official has said.

Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, made his claims about Alabama while visiting the southern state during an investigation into US poverty.

He visited several counties in Alabama’s ‘Black Belt’ region, a region with predominantly black residents that has long experienced poverty and racial segregation.

‘I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees,’ Alston told AL.com. ‘I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this.’

Alston said that in rural Lowndes County, homes weren’t connected to sewage systems and residents couldn’t afford to install septic tanks.

‘Many resort to digging ditches & straight piping waste water to within meters of homes, posing serious health risks,’ he tweeted on Friday.

Diseases like E. Coli and hookworm run rampant in the county because there is scarce access to clean drinking water.

Local resident Aaron Thigpen, who showed Alston where he lived, said that water gets contaminated if either the raw sewage pipes or main water line pipes have holes in them.

‘It’s really bad when you’ve got a lot of kids around like there are here,’ he told AL.com. ‘They’re playing ball and the ball goes into the raw sewage, and they don’t know the importance of not handling sewage.’

Nearly 20 per cent of Alabamians live below the federal poverty line, and nine counties have poverty rates higher than 30 per cent, according to the 2017 Alabama Poverty Data Sheet.

Nearly 41million people in the United States live in poverty – the second-highest rate above poverty among rich countries – according to the Census Bureau.

UN Investigators have also visited towns and cities in California and Puerto Rico as part of its poverty and human rights investigation. Officials also plan to visit Washington, DC, and West Virginia.