For Want of a Toilet

The World Toilet Summit took place here in New Delhi earlier this month. Delegates racked their brains to come up with ideas for innovative toilets. And if you can’t help a smirk at that, consider this:

Due to the absence of an organised sanitation system, 1.8 million children across the world die of diarrhoea annually, and close to half the population in developing countries suffers health problems caused by water and sanitation defects, at any given time. The World Health Organisation estimates that 200 million people are infected with schistosomiasis — a disease caused by lack of access to hygienic sanitation facilities. Experts say open defection contaminates water and helps the spread of diseases like diarrhoea, which kills at least 4,900 people everyday, worldwide….(more).

Nothing remotely funny there, unfortunately. According to this video report, self-cleaning toilets and a fourteen-year-old inventor who has come up with an idea for preventing sewage disposal from trains at railway stations were part of the annual summit.

This UN report says that lack of sanitation facilities dooms 3 billion people to a life that is primitive and devoid of basic dignity. Apart from causing disease, lack of proper sanitation facilities can have more indirect impact as well — such as on girl’s education. Girls tend to miss school when there are no sanitation facilities because it is difficult for them to go out in the open. When there are no separate facilities for boys and girls, they don’t attend school during menstruation. It’s worse when there are no latrines at home.

In many cultures, girls and women wait until after dark to defecate if they have no latrine in the household, experiencing discomfort and sometimes serious illness as a result. When girls and women have to walk to a place distant from their home for excreta disposal, particularly at night, they are vulnerable to harassment and assault.

It’s hard to imagine people living without latrines — something that so many take for granted in this era of designer bathrooms and spa treatments — but the number of
people without access to latrines and toilets increased by some 400 million over the last decade. And with increasing migration and urbanisation and burgeoning slums, it is likely to keep doing so unless solutions are provided quickly.

On a lighter note, here’s a hilarious CWS commercial via The Bathroom Diaries. Enjoy.

The image used in the post is of Lam Sai Wing’s Golden Toilet via Travel Channel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Our Bodies, Talking About Rights, Women Everywhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.