By Therese Dooley and - -
NEW YORK, Nov 15 2007 (IPS)

Recognising how fundamental sanitation is to children\’s health, social and economic development, and environmental sustainability, The UN General Assembly has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation (IYS), writes Therese Dooley, Senior Advisor for Hygiene and Sanitation at UNICEF In this article, Dooley writes that every year, diarrhoea from inadequate sanitation and unsafe hygiene practices kills more than 1.5 million children under five, or one child every 20 seconds. Improved sanitation can also reduce illness due to diarrhoea by 35 percent, averting up to 190 million cases each year. Hand washing with soap, another key issue linked to sanitation, can decrease diarrhoea by over 43 percent. Improved sanitation and hand washing would also have significant impact on cholera, dysentery, worms, and trachoma. The economic cost of not having toilets and not practising good hygiene is also significant. Lost productivity and time, preventable health costs, lost school fees, and the longer term costs of environmental impacts can seriously affect a country\’s growth and economic development. It is estimated that every dollar spent on sanitation yields approximately nine dollars in benefits; thus investing in sanitation makes good economic sense.

Hassina, a 10-year-old girl at Gewane Primary School in northeastern Ethiopia, illustrates the importance of sanitation and hygiene to children: ”Toilets in our school and at home have made a big difference to my life. Before I hated using the old toilet at school or going to the field and I preferred to wait until evening time even if I had to go badly,” Hassina told us. “At first people did not want to talk about toilets and hygiene. They said it was embarrassing and that I shouldn’t be talking about it. But for me it is very important as it will protect my family, so I kept talking and my parents listened to me and now we have a toilet at home.”

A key member of the sanitation and hygiene club, Hassina is an agent of change in her community. ”I want to be a doctor when I grow up, but through what I have learned at the club I can start healing people from today, not only other students but also those people who are not in school.”

Unlike Hassina, almost a billion children around the world still lack access to clean and safe toilets, so IYS is especially significant for UNICEF and its work for children. IYS provides the global community with an opportunity to raise awareness and accelerate actions to achieve the sanitation Millennium Development Goal.

Children under five are most vulnerable to the effects of insufficient sanitation and hygiene. Every year, diarrhoea resulting from inadequate sanitation and unsafe hygiene practices kills more than 1.5 million children under five, or one every 20 seconds.

Diarrhoea is also closely linked to under-nutrition, a condition that is associated with more than half of all under-five deaths, and undernourished children, in turn, have compromised immune systems and are at a higher risk for developing pneumonia, which kills more children than any other disease. The importance of hygiene and sanitation are undeniable when you consider that of the approximately 120 million children born in developing countries each year, half will live in households without access to improved sanitation facilities.

In addition to saving young lives, improved sanitation can reduce illness due to diarrhoea by 35 percent, averting up to 190 million cases each year. Hand washing with soap, another key issue linked to sanitation, can decrease diarrhoea by over 43 percent. Improved sanitation and hand washing would also have a significant impact on cholera, dysentery, worms, and trachoma. Infestation with parasitic worms is another major health problem and children in countries with low sanitation coverage commonly carry up to 1,000 hookworms, roundworms, and whipworms at a time, which can cause anaemia and other debilitating conditions.

Women and girls bear the burden when sanitation is unavailable. Sanitation facilities enhance women’s privacy, dignity, and status. Many women and girls become sanitation prisoners, forced to wait until dark to defecate in a place where they cannot be seen. The presence of adequate school sanitation facilities, which are separate and private, increase girls’ attendance, especially after puberty, improve children’s performance at school, and enhance teacher recruitment, attendance, and retention.

In regions where a large proportion of the population lacks adequate sanitation, sewage flows directly into streams, rivers, and lakes, affecting the environment. Currently about 90 percent of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated into waterways, often polluting the only usable water supply. One gram of faeces can contain more than 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 parasite eggs. With more than 200 million tonnes of human waste going uncontained and untreated around the world each year, the health of everyone, but especially children, is at risk each day.

The economic cost of not having toilets and not practising good hygiene is also significant. Lost productivity and time, preventable health costs, lost school fees, and the longer term costs of environmental impacts can seriously affect a country’s growth and economic development. It is estimated that every dollar spent on sanitation yields approximately nine dollars in benefits; thus investing in sanitation makes good economic sense.

Sanitation is fundamental to children’s health, social and economic development, and environmental sustainability. By working together in partnership with governments, civil society, faith-based organisations, communities, and children, we can make a difference.

The International Year of Sanitation provides us with a unique opportunity to increase political awareness of sanitation and raise its profile on the development agenda. Like Hassina, we must be prepared to take action about sanitation and spread the message of its importance to everyone. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt: