- STOCKHOLM (AFP) -- Almost
a third of people in the world have no access to a toilet, a privation
that has dramatic consequences and leads to millions of deaths each year,
experts at a water conference said this week.
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- Children, highly susceptible to hygiene-related diseases,
are the main victims.
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- "Diarrhea resulting from poor sanitation and hygiene
is responsible for the death of more than two million impoverished children
each year," the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said
during the World Water Week conference gathering some 2,500 international
experts in the Swedish capital.
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- According to SIWI spokesman David Trouba, 50 to 70 percent
of the world's hospitals are full of patients suffering from easily-preventable
water-related diseases.
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- And the World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent
of all sickness in the world is attributable to unsafe water and sanitation.
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- Yet the problem has not attracted the attention it deserves
and is described as the "orphan child" of the water sector, often
underexplored and underfinanced.
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- "It's one of those untold stories of the development
sector," said Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and
Environment in India and a prominent expert at the conference.
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- "One reason is the taboo part. You don't talk about
these issues so easily, it's a private thing," lamented Johan Kuylenstierna,
the director of World Water Week.
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- But Narain noted with a hint of optimism that governments
were beginning to make the issue a priority.
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- Sanitation and hygiene conditions have wide-ranging implications
on society.
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- They play a direct role on people's overall health, but
also on infant mortality rates, poverty reduction, the role of women and
girls in society, schooling, the environment, and social and economic development,
according to the United Nations.
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- "Women are most affected by the problem of lacking
sanitation systems," Kuylenstierna said.
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- Gynecological illnesses and hygiene problems linked to
menstruation make girls and women particularly vulnerable.
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- Many girls do not pursue an education because schools
do not have proper toilets or they must share toilets with boys.
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- Lack of clean water also affects education since many
students who fall ill miss classes, the UN said.
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- The one-third of the population who have no access to
toilets, or 2.6 billion people, generate more than 200 million tonnes (220
million US tons) of excrement annually that are neither collected nor treated,
presenting a health risk.
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- Installing toilets would not be very costly, insisted
Kuylenstierna, who criticised the lack of political will and action in
the field as a "scandal".
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- For each dollar spent on improving sanitation and hygiene
conditions, between three and 34 dollars (25 euros) would be saved in the
fields of health, education and socio-economic development, according to
the UN.
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- The UN has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation,
putting the spotlight on public health amid a rise in urban poverty and
expanding slums.
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- "The slum problem is very much a water and sanitation
problem," said Inga Bjoerk Klevby, the deputy director of the UN's
housing programme Habitat.
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- Some one billion people, or one of every six people in
the world, currently live in slums, poverty-stricken and overpopulated
neighbourhoods that have inadequate infrastructure for sanitation and hygiene.
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- The trend of urban poverty shows no signs of diminishing:
about half of the world's population currently lives in urban areas, a
figure that is expected to rise to two-thirds by 2030, Klevby said.
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