Almost half the world's population, 2.6 billion people, lack access to basic sanitation. One in six people, 1.1 billion, lack access to safe drinking water. The lack of access to these basic requirements of healthy living is the world's most horrific and least reported humanitarian disaster. RESULTS Canada has been working to shine a spotlight on this neglected issue. According to the World Health Organization, 4,500 children die daily from the consequences of unsafe water and sanitation - about 3.4 million children and adults annually.
Where there are no toilets, people defecate in ditches, or in plastic bags dumped into ditches, or at best, dumpsites. In many of the world's largest urban slums, such as Kibera in Kenya, raw sewage is everywhere, and when it rains, noxious black liquid flows into the streets, through people's homes, and into the local water supply. When people fall ill, as they invariably do in these conditions, the vicious cycle begins anew, in accelerated fashion. Sickness begets human waste, which begets more sickness.
The health problems caused by poor sanitation are legion. It is responsible for a broad range of disorders such as diarrhea (one of the world's biggest killers of children), cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A, dysentery and Guinea worm disease. And the lack of adequate sanitation at schools throughout the developing world keeps many children, especially girls, from completing basic education.
There is less than a decade left until the target date of 2015 for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the international targets for global poverty reduction. The sanitation goal, which is to halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation, is the least likely of all MDGs to be achieved. This is in marked contrast to the steady progress being made providing clean water: the goal of halving the proportion of people without access to clean water by 2015 is currently on track to be achieved. Therefore, the most urgent need of all is for a rapid increase in the scale and effectiveness of sanitation programs. Achieving this will require bringing improved sanitation to 120 million people every year between now and 2015. And even if that were accomplished, 1.9 billion people would still be without access.
Hand-washing, or hygiene promotion, is a second essential element of sanitation programs. Hand washing is quite simply the most cost-effective health intervention in the world. Programs in schools and clinics can promote simple hand washing with soap and water, and awareness of how disease is transmitted. The transition to simple, basic sanitation and hygiene improvements is accompanied by a more than 30% reduction in child mortality, according to the United Nations Development Program.
