SANITATION SAVES LIVES AND HELPS THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE ECONOMY

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.