Over 2.4 bn worldwide without sanitation: UN
Over 2.4 billion people worldwide are still without sanitation, including almost a billion who are compelled to defecate in the open, a United Nations report said on Wednesday. The study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) also warned that the lack of progress on sanitation is threatening to undermine child survival and health benefits from gains in access to safe drinking water.
Entitled, “Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Assessment”, the report tracked access to drinking water and sanitation against the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that expire this year. More than 90 percent of the world population has access to clean water, but 2.4 billion people, most in rural areas, continue to live without toilets. Although some 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990, the world has missed the MDG target by nearly 700 million people. Today, only 68 percent of the world's population uses an improved sanitation facility -- nine percentage points below the MDG target of 77 percent.
Maria Neira, head of public health at WHO warned that until everyone has access to adequate sanitation facilities, the quality of water supplies will be undermined and too many people will continue to die from waterborne and water-related diseases. "The practice of open defecation,” she noted, “is also linked to a higher risk of stunting -- or chronic malnutrition -- which affects 161 million children worldwide, leaving them with irreversible physical and cognitive damage."
In September, world leaders are due to adopt a set of development objectives known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that include ending poverty, reducing child mortality, tackling climate change, as well as eliminating open defecation by 2030, to replace the eight expiring U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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