2.5B People Lack Proper Sanitation, Creating Adverse Effects On Health

The Guardian discusses the issue of sanitation and its relevance to development and health outcomes globally.

The Guardian: Lack of toilets blights the lives of 2.5bn people, U.N. chief warns
“The world’s lack of progress in building toilets and ending open defecation is having a ‘staggering’ effect on the health, safety, education, prosperity, and dignity of 2.5 billion people, the U.N. deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, has warned…” (Jones, 8/28).

The Guardian: Ethiopians’ plight: ‘The toilets are unhealthy, but we don’t have a choice’
“Addis Ababa has more than three million people, but there are just 63 public toilets. … Government figures show that diarrheal diseases are among the 10 most prolific in the country…” (Smith, 8/28).

The Guardian: Lack of toilets puts India’s health and rural women’s safety at risk
“…India leads the world in open defecation. At least 636 million Indians lack toilets, according to the latest census data, a crisis that contributes to disease, childhood malnutrition, loss of economic output, and, as highlighted recently, violence against women…” (Anand, 8/28).

The Guardian: Toilets: 2.5bn people go without — a 99-second video animation
“More people have access to mobile phones than to bog-standard sanitation around the world. The numbers are actually quite close — both are around the 4.5bn mark. But the implications are clear: as a species, we value a text, a tweet, the incessant pulse of blinking pixels over one of our most basic sanitary needs: the loo…” (Henley et al., 8/28).

The KFF Daily Global Health Policy Report summarized news and information on global health policy from hundreds of sources, from May 2009 through December 2020. All summaries are archived and available via search.

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