Many people in the West take for granted that heeding nature’s call means secluding oneself in a small room with a toilet. A huge number of people throughout the world do not have access to such facilities. As the World Health Organization reports, making do without a toilet threatens the public health and safety of millions worldwide.
The report is called The Joint Monitoring Program report, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment and it offers a comprehensive look at how close (or far) the world is from achieving the 2000 global target to improve access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities by two-thirds.
The WHO has missed its target by over 700 million people.
2.4 billion people, or one in three worldwide, are still without sanitation facilities. 946 people still defecate in the open. India especially is lagging when it comes to improving bathroom access.
Several factors have stood in the way of progress. There has been inadequate investments in campaigns to change social norms that it is acceptable to go the bathroom in the open. Additional, not enough has been done to provide affordable products to the poor.
“There is a kind of a feeling among politicians that if we ignore the problem it will go away,” said Nitya Jacob, policy leader for the Indian branch of WaterAid, an international charity. “And so we’ve had years of poor funding, poor quality equipment and poor solutions being offered to the poor.”
Still, compared with the figures 25 years ago, those from 1990, 91 percent of the global population now have improved drinking water. Gains have been particularly striking in sub-Saharan Africa.
The number of children under the age of five who die of diarrhea – a result of drinking dirty water and dehydration – has halved over the 15 years since the Millennium Development Goals were set.
Defecating in public is not just a matter of etiquette. It has serious health consequences. More often than not, human waste contaminates drinking water, resulting in increased risk of stunted growth or chronic malnutrition of over 161 million children worldwide.
Worse, inadequate access to water and sanitation contributes to the severity of 16 of the 17 ‘neglected tropical diseases’ (NTDs), including trachoma, soil-transmitted helminthes (intestinal worms) and schistosomiasis. Such diseases affect 1.5 billion people across 149 countries. NTDs cause blindness, disfigurement, disability, and death.
“Until everyone has access to adequate sanitation facilities, the quality of water supplies will be undermined and too many people will continue to die from waterborne and water-related diseases,” said Dr Maria Neira, Director of the WHO Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.
The evaluation comes as the UN organizations are preparing to wrap up the MDGs, which are expiring this year, and create a new set of goals to best allocate its $2.5 trillion in development funds from now through 2030.
