* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
With years of development aid behind us, surely there are now latrines and toilet blocks all over Africa – so what’s the problem?
Somehow, despite the fast pace of global progress, there are still 2.4 billion people on our planet today who lack access to the most basic of sanitation services – a toilet. Compounding the situation is the dearth of hygiene facilities and clean water sources.
Almost 1,000 children die every single day as a result. Every year, more children die from diarrhoea-related disease than from HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
To our shame, this is entirely preventable.
With the recent launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, we are getting closer to brokering a solution. These goals, adopted by 191 countries around the world, aim to eliminate extreme poverty and promote healthier living over the next 15 years.
Crucially, Goal 6 specifically acknowledges the importance of improved sanitation, clean water and good hygiene behaviour. This specificity was not as prominent under the Millennium Development Goals, with these factors relegated to side issues under environmental sustainability.
The bottom line is this: when people can’t keep themselves, their children and their living spaces clean, diseases are given free rein to multiply and spread. Today, on World Toilet Day, it is fitting to remember that sanitation was recognised as ‘the greatest medical milestone since 1840’, according to a poll conducted by the British Medical Journal in 2007.
With years of development aid behind us, surely there are now latrines and toilet blocks all over Africa – so what’s the problem?
In my experience, there are usually a number of reasons why people don’t use latrines that have been provided. These are actually pretty straightforward and easy to avoid, once you know about them at design state.
Let’s look at kids. If you’ve grown up in rural Africa, chances are you’ve always gone to the loo in the outdoors – what we call ‘open defecation’ (not the most charming of titles, I admit). Using a latrine for the first time can be particularly challenging for such children, who are now expected to close themselves into a small space with a locked door. This can be quite frightening, particularly if the lighting is bad. What I’ve found helps get around this problem is consulting children and parents on the design of latrines before any work begins. There are ways of designing the blocks to give the children privacy without completely closing them off.
These discussions also helped me realise that in some latrine blocks, the drop holes (into which you have to ‘go’) are often constructed the same in every latrine – meaning that children use the same sized holes as adults. Thus, children have a real (and legitimate) fear of falling into the hole (think back to that scene in the film Slumdog Millionaire). As a result, they either avoid the latrine entirely, or else miss the hole and soil the floor, making the latrine dirty and full of flies. Again, putting children at the forefront of the design process makes sense and is an easy way to overcome this problem.
Our goal is that health behaviours should be engrained in people’s everyday culture. We must bear in mind that handwashing after defecating is a difficult task to achieve in most communities in which we work, given the lack of current clean water and sanitation facilities.
Like so many development issues, we need the political will and financial support to make sanitation for all a reality. For this reason, I welcome the Sustainable Development Goals, and believe they are a positive step in the right direction.
John Heelham is WASH Engineering Adviser, Concern Worldwide
