Toilets – a “luxury” unavailable in certain parts of the world

[19 April 2010 - 16h35]

In 2008, around 40% of the world’s population was still without good quality sanitation. However, the efforts of the WHO and UNICEF under the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation are, despite everything, beginning to bear fruit: the percentage of the world’s population reduced to satisfying their “call of nature” out in the open is now “no more than” 17%, compared with 25% in 1990.

More than a billion men and women across the world defecate out in the open. Although this practice – the most unhygienic of all – is generally in decline, it remains firmly rooted in South East Asia. For 44% of the population, improvised toilets are the only option.

Seven times out of ten, it is the rural areas that are affected by the lack of sanitation systems. Access to “improved sanitation” is a long way from becoming as widespread as access to drinking water – 87% of the population now has access to this. Although in respect of drinking water, the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved by 2015, the WHO agrees that this will probably not be the case with sanitation, where the threshold of a billion new connections seems illusive.

Yet every year these problems – poor water quality and lack of sanitation systems – cost the lives of 1.5 million children under the age of 5. Obviously this is something that requires global consideration. Why couldn’t this waste matter be transformed into fuel? This could be an interesting option providing extra energy resources in areas often affected by the most extreme levels of poverty. For example, in both Tibet and India, animal excrement is commonly burned as fuel instead of wood.

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