Global Access To Improved Sanitation
The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF has defined improved sanitation as follows:
- Flush toilet
- Connection to a piped sewer system
- Connection to a septic system
- Flush / pour-flush to a pit latrine
- Ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrine
- Pit latrine with slab
- Composting toilet
- Some special cases
The JMP publishes a report of updated estimates every two years on the use of various types of drinking-water sources and sanitation facilities at the national, regional and global levels. In March 2012, the JMP released its latest updates. According to the definition above, 1.8 billion more people used improved sanitation in 2010 than in 1990, bringing the percentage of people using improved sanitation to 63% globally. However, the world remains off track for the sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals. 2.5 billion lack improved sanitation. According to the JMP, if current trends continue, in 2015 2.4 billion people will lack access to improved sanitation facilities. 15 per cent of the population still practise open defecation, defined as defecation in fields, forests, bushes, bodies of water or other open spaces. This represents 1.1 billion people. Though the proportion of people practising open defecation is decreasing, the absolute number has remained at over one billion for several years, due to population growth.
This outcome presents substantial public health risks as the waste could contaminate drinking water and cause life threatening forms of diarrhea to infants. Most cities can neither afford a sewage drainage system, nor a sewage treatment system, as Sunita Narain spelled out in the magazine D+C Development and Cooperation. Improved sanitation, including hand washing and water purification, could save the lives of 1.5 million children who die from diarrheal diseases each year.
Read more about this topic: Sanitized, Wastewater
Famous quotes containing the words global, access and/or improved:
“As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
All information should be free.
Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
You can create art and beauty on a computer.
Computers can change your life for the better.”
—Steven Levy, U.S. writer. Hackers, ch. 2, “The Hacker Ethic,” pp. 27-33, Anchor Press, Doubleday (1984)
“There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)