Today is World Toilet Day and it prompts the question - what
will you do?
It’s an astonishing fact that about one third of the world’s
people, in real numbers that’s around 2,500,000,000, don’t have the benefit of
a toilet. Indeed they don’t even have a
decent water supply. And because of that
they die of terrible diseases surrounded in squalor.
It’s another awful fact that more children die each year with
diarrhoeal diseases than die of AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Shocking.
Unfortunately, the problem tends to be forgotten since it’s
not a popular subject for discussion over the dinner table. Nor is it a popular
subject for our leaders. It just isn’t
politics. Despite compelling evidence that shows the benefits and substantial returns
of investing in sanitation, it continues to be an ‘unglamorous’ subject for
many policy-makers.
Defecating in the open is certainly no fun yet billions
suffer this indignity. And in schools the lack of clean and safe toilets leads
to a high dropout, especially among girls.
There’s no doubt that we have a major problem on our hands
and since its world toilet day what will you do?
Talking about it would be a start.