When people in rich countries think about basic sanitation, they think about a private toilet that flushes a continuous supply of clean, piped water. At the other end of the sanitation spectrum are the millions of people forced to defecate in bags, buckets, fields or roadside ditches. If the rich country flush toilet were the benchmark, the number of people without sanitation would soar from 2.6 billion to about 4 billion people.
Basic sanitation is the lowest cost technology for giving people a safe, private and healthy way to dispose of human waste and wastewater so that people can live in a clean and healthy environment, both at home, and in their neighbourhood.
“Not having access” to sanitation is a polite euphemism for a form of deprivation that threatens life, destroys opportunity, and undermines human dignity. Access to basic sanitation is a crucial human development goal in its own right, but sanitation is also a means to far wider human development ends.
November 19 is International World Toilet Day. Take a moment to think about those without toilets, those who suffer because they don’t have a safe, private, or healthy place to defecate. Be grateful for your toilet. And find out what you can do to help those without toilets gain access to the basic sanitation services they need to lead healthier, happier lives.