Business Daily (Nairobi)
DR Margaret Chan
3 April 2008
opinion
Let me go straight to the point. An estimated 40 per cent of the world's population lives without one of the basic amenities of modern life: a toilet.
This means that 2.6 billion people are forced to relieve themselves in open spaces - in fields, forests, bushes, water bodies, or a patch of mud. This is a degrading way of life, and this is a form of environmental degradation with direct and dramatic consequences for health.
Lack of sanitation breeds the so-called diseases of filth. These are diseases caused by the faecal contamination of food, water, or soil, or spread by flies that feed on filth.
In the absence of sanitation, huge numbers of people are, in effect, being sickened by ingestion of infected excrement. This is intolerable amidst the collective wealth of the 21st century.
The associated diseases are big ones. Diarrhoeal disease is responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths each year.. Another example is blinding trachoma.
Spread by filth flies, this disease is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide. How can we expect human development to move forward in the presence of such diseases? How can we hope to prevent these diseases in the absence of sanitation? Let us look at the impact on human dignity.
In almost all societies, women and girls suffer the most when sanitation is inadequate. By far, women and girls bear the greatest burden of domestic responsibilities, including the disposal of household human wastes.
Women and girls have a special need for sanitation facilities that are safe, private, and near their homes. Women care for children - children who are suffering and often dying - from diarrhoeal disease.
Women bear the children to replace the ones that die. Lack of sanitation facilities at schools keeps girls at home. When I took office at the start of last year, I called for a return to the values, principles, and approaches of primary health care.
Unless we do so, I do not believe we will be able to reach the health-related Millennium Development Goals.And sanitation fits hand-in-hand with this agenda. We must not underestimate the need to create demand for sanitation in ways that permanently change behaviours.
Building latrines will not be sufficient if they are unused.If we want to break the stranglehold of poverty, and reap the multiple benefits for health, we must address sanitation.
Dr Chan is the Director-General of the World Health Organisation.
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