* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Impact of sanitation and hygiene on health, education and women's rights cannot be understated
“We have built. We have progressed. But there is no hallmark of success more distinctive and more meaningful than achieving our position as the cleanest and greenest city in South Asia.”
- Mr Lee Kuan Yew, at the launch of Singapore’s Keep Singapore Clean Campaign, 1 October 1968
Whenever I travel outside of Singapore, first reactions to my country of origin invariably take the same form: “That’s the place where you can’t chew chewing gum, right?” or the more pleasing variant of “I’ve been there; it’s really clean!”
I used to deflect these responses with a polite smile and a correction (“actually, chewing gum isn’t illegal…”), and point out other things that our little city-state can lay claim to, like good food. Being told that your country is devoid of litter rarely makes one blush and grin with national pride.
The passing tourist traffic may also fail to notice that one of Singapore’s most groundbreaking developments is not at street level, but underground. Its networks of sewers and water pipes, laid long before I was born, helped provide a foundation for Singapore’s prosperous future.
My millennial generation has taken our clean streets and odourless toilets for granted. We would roll our eyes when, as primary school children, we were given classroom roles like “cleanliness monitor” or “toilet inspector”. We laughed at the heavy-handed public cleanliness campaign with its awkward cartoon posters, which were pasted in every public toilet.
But this very lack of appreciation for Singapore’s cleanliness and hygiene is a mark of the country’s success. Such has been the rapid progress that stories of squatter settlements and open sewers are viewed in the same way as yellowed photos of our parents sporting big perms and bell-bottomed trousers – with a jarring sense of dislocation from the present and an incredulity that they ever lived like that.
What I used to consign to being another fun fact in our country’s history is in reality just a generation or two removed. Instead of toilets, my mother and her sister had metal buckets, which were collected by bucket collectors in “night soil” trucks. They were warned to beware of the occasional peeping tom during early morning toilet runs. If the bucket was not cleared for a few days, maggots would thrive.
When my grandmother worked as a doctor in the 1950s, ‘60s and even ‘70s, the maternity and baby-care hospital was so overcrowded that patients had to lie on the floors, hardly the most sanitary condition for women about to give birth. Makeshift beds for patients were still necessary in the 1980s. Yet now Singapore boasts some of the best medical facilities in the world.
WaterAid’s research on how to bring sanitation and hygiene to a whole population highlights these achievements in Singapore, and similar transformations in Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand. It recognises the role of high-level political leadership from people like Lee Kuan Yew in driving the sanitation improvements. The research also points out that, as Lee Kuan Yew said in 1968, improved sanitation and hygiene became an intrinsic part of national development and even national identity. From these countries, we learn that it is crucial that sanitation is not seen as a standalone issue but woven into plans around public health, housing, education and hygiene programmes.
There are many cities and states in the developing world today facing similar challenges. Each situation has its own unique circumstances. But lessons can be learned from Singapore’s experience. Singapore had a per-capita GDP of just $155 US in 1960, behind Ghana which was then $183, and Liberia which was $170.
If my little city-state could do it, others can too.
This year is an unprecedented moment to achieve progress. As the UN enters the final negotiations around the shape and makeup of the new Sustainable Development Goals, there is a chance to recognise the role water and sanitation play in global health, gender equality and educational achievement, through strong measures of progress, greater accountability and responsibility.
Singapore’s achievements elicit in me an unexpected sense of national pride. As the political leaders intended, it appears sanitation and hygiene have become part of the national narrative. The impact of sanitation and hygiene on health, education, the rights of women and girls, the productivity of the workforce cannot be understated. What could be more important?
Wen Hoe is research officer, WaterAid UK
