Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2007 (IPS) – The world #39s sanitation crisis, caused primarily by the lack of toilet facilities for over 2.6 billion people, is an insult to humanity , says the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
Every 20 minutes we spend sitting in our offices, organising meetings, passing resolutions and discussing policies, a child dies as a direct result of poor sanitation, complained the Council #39s executive director Jon Lane.
According to the U.N. Children #39s Fund (UNICEF), an average of about 1.5 million children die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.
And so, on Wednesday, the United Nations formally launched the International Year of Sanitation 2008 (IYS), a theme set by the 192-member General Assembly in a resolution unanimously adopted in December 2006.
The coming 12 months provides us with a platform to prioritise sanitation on the international community #39s agenda, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the launching ceremony.
The IYS, he pointed out, will also energise efforts towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target of halving by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
Related IPS Articles
Additionally, there will be major regional conferences on sanitation next year, including one that will focus on school sanitation.
Ban said that access to sanitation is deeply connected to virtually all of the MDGs, in particular those involving the environment, education, gender equality and reduction of child mortality and global poverty.
The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; ensuring environmental sustainability; the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; and a global partnership for development between the rich and the poor.
A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015. But their implementation has been thwarted by several factors, including a decline in development aid by Western donors.
Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, chair of the U.N. #39s General Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, struck an optimistic note when he said: Today, we go from a stage of planning to one of implementation.
He said it is vital that progress is accelerated if the MDG targets on sanitation are to be reached.
The United Nations says progress has been slow, although more than 1.2 billion people worldwide have gained access to improved sanitation between 1990 and 2004.
Still, over 2.6 billion people are lagging far behind. If current trends continue, the United Nations predicts there will still be about 2.4 billion people without basic sanitation in 2015.
At any one time, half of the world #39s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO).
And in sub-Saharan Africa, a baby #39s chance of dying from diarrhoea is almost 520 times the chance of that in Europe or the United States.
In a publication titled Water for Life Decade, 2005-2015 , the United Nations has reinforced the grim facts and statistics relating to water and sanitation.
Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation is the world #39s single largest cause of illness, it says, and can spread such diseases as diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, polio, trachoma and tapeworms many of which can be fatal to people in the developing world.
And there are other water-associated diseases, such as malaria and filariasis, which affect vast populations worldwide. Malaria alone kills more than one million people every year.
The United Nations warns that increased urbanisation is also placing an enormous strain on existing water and sanitation infrastructure.
In a report released Monday, the London-based WaterAid said the world #39s five worst places for poor sanitation were Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. All of them had over 85 percent of the people lacking adequate sanitation.
In sheer numbers, the study said, the world #39s five worst places were China (with 732.4 million people lacking proper sanitation), India (728.3 million), Indonesia (99 million), Bangladesh (84.9 million) and Nigeria (72 million).
The study said there is compelling evidence that sanitation brings the single greatest return on investment of any development intervention (roughly about nine dollars for every dollar spent) yet it remains the most neglected and most off-track of the Millennium Development Goal targets.
