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Proper sanitation out of reach for third of world's population - report

by olesya-dmitracova | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Monday, 15 March 2010 15:16 GMT

LONDON (AlertNet) - Almost 39 percent of the global population have no access to adequate toilet facilities, contributing to poor hygiene which kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, a report showed on Monday.

Meanwhile, safe drinking water remains out of reach for 13 percent worldwide, added the study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and U.N. children's fund UNICEF entitled "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-Water: 2010 Update Report".

Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene kill an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five each year, the two world bodies said in a statement.

"We all recognise the vital importance of water and sanitation to human health and well-being and their role as an engine of development," said Maria Neira, WHO's Director for the Department of Public Health and Environment.

"The question now lies in how to ... leap a step further to ultimately achieve the vision of universal access," she added in the statement.

The organisations use the term "improved sanitation" to denote adequate sanitation, which they describe as a facility that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact, excluding any amenity that is public or shared between two or more households. Examples include a standard flush toilet, a septic tank or a pit latrine per household.

The proportion of people defecating in the open - the riskiest sanitation practice of all - has declined to 17 percent of the world's population, or 1.1 billion people, in 2008 from a quarter in 1990.

However, almost half of the population in Southern Asia still leave human waste in fields, forests and rivers. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 27 percent do so.

The vast majority of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation live in rural areas, the report found.

Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania rank bottom in terms of availability of clean water, while Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia lag the most on sanitation.

The study aims to help policy-makers, donors, governmental and non-governmental agencies in their efforts to improve access to water and sanitation, WHO and UNICEF said.

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