For the over 700 children under age five who die every day from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene, toilet is yet to be a lifesaver. And, for more than half of the global population, 4.5 billion people are still lacking safe sanitation.
This is a matter of serious concern to a civic group in Nigeria, Centre for Water and Environment Development (CWED). Its Programme Manager, Doris Zakama, says the world is not on track to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 if we don’t ensure availability and sustainable management of sanitation and water for all by 2030.
According to CWED, ‘’today, 4.5 billion people live without a safe toilet and 892 million people still practice open defecation. The impact of exposure to human faeces on this scale has a devastating effect on public health, living and working conditions, nutrition, education and economic productivity across the world.”
Obviously, without safely managed, sustainable sanitation, people often have no choice but to use unreliable, inadequate toilets or practise open defecation. Even where toilets exist, overflows and leaks from pipes and septic systems, and dumping or improper treatment, can mean untreated human waste gets out into the environment and spreads deadly and chronic diseases such as cholera and intestinal worms.
In a bid to help break taboos around toilets and make sanitation for all a global development priority, the United Nations designated November 19 as World Toilet Day. The resolution declaring the Day titled “Sanitation for All” (A/RES/67/291) was adopted on July 24, 2013, and urged UN member states and relevant stakeholders to encourage behavioural change and the implementation of policies to increase access to sanitation among the poor, along with a call to end the practice of open-air defecation, which it deemed extremely harmful to public health.
Sanitation is also a question of basic dignity and women safety, who should not risk being victims of rape and abuse because of lack of access to a toilet that offers privacy. The resolution also recognizes the role that civil society and non-governmental organizations play in raising awareness of this issue.
It also calls on countries to approach sanitation in a much broader context that includes hygiene promotion, the provision of basic sanitation services, and sewerage and wastewater treatment and reuse in the context of integrated water management.
An important milestone in this aspect is the current Water Action Decade (2018-2028) that will accelerate efforts towards meeting water-related challenges, including limited access to safe water and sanitation, increasing pressure on water resources and ecosystems, and an exacerbated risk of droughts and floods.
CWED was however founded in 1998 by an independent research team that was primarily dedicated to Sustainable Water and Environmental Resources Development, with its headquarters in Kaduna State. The group was established with the conviction that the environment and water resources are essential to human livelihood and sustainable development.
The environment and water resources are two of the most essential resources for life and have a reciprocal relationship. The terrestrial and aquatic life requires good quality water in sufficient quantities for survival and productivity while the environment provides services that maintain water resources in a useable state for all sectors.
Disturbingly, the continuous degradation of the environment and water resources which is most often associated with the impacts of human activities and other related factors has led to further decline of the living standards of a vast majority of the population, especially in the developing world.
The Centre, therefore, seeks to address these problems amidst other numerous challenges. For it, 47 million people do not use toilets in Nigeria, causing nearly 87,000 diarrhoea deaths in children under the age of five.
Zakama said poor sanitation contributes to several other neglected tropical diseases and undernutrition. She was speaking during a sensitisation visit to Karuga community in Chikun, Kaduna State as part of activities to mark the World Toilet Day 2021.
She said the day was marked this year with the theme, Valuing Toilet, and accordingly emphasised the importance of expanding sanitation access to the people living without safely managed sanitation options.
In her message to community members, she said good toilets save lives, because human waste spreads killer diseases, so the World Toilet Day is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and reduce open defecation practice across the nation.
