Two Billion People Use Water Contaminated By Poo – UN

A report published on Wednesday in Brussels by the UN said that more than two billion people use water contaminated by faeces, posing a global health risk despite billions of dollars spent on sanitation.
Bruce Gordon, Water and Sanitation Coordinator of the
World Health Organisation (WHO) said that one in seven
people, mostly poor and living in rural areas, still
defecated in the open.
He said by so doing it contaminated water, creating a
breeding ground for diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and
typhoid.
"If people don't invest in sanitation the costs are going
to be incredible and health is going to be a big issue,"
he said.
"Extraordinary efforts need to be made now to take it to
those remaining pockets of people who don't access
water and sanitation," he added.
Gordon said inadequate water supply and sanitation
results in annual economic losses of $260 billion.
He said investigation revealed that even though aid
money for the sector was at an all time high, 1.8 billion
people are exposed to contaminated water.
Gordon said most of the funds go towards investments
in water and only a quarter to sanitation, while rural
areas are often neglected.
He said money was not the only reason that one billion
people, most of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan
Africa, still take their private business outdoors.
Gordon said preventing children's deaths and illness,
privacy and safety for women, and economic and
environmental benefits as some of the reasons to
invest in sanitation.
"Water and sanitation and hygiene are fundamental
pre-requisites to have in place not only for
development, but to stop outbreaks of diseases like
Ebola or cholera," he said.
ack Sim, the Founder of the World Toilet Organisation,
said in some societies open defecation was a cultural
norm and even a social thing to do.
"People enjoy that social event, but they have to
understand that the contaminated water eventually
comes back as diseases to kill the children and to make
people sick," he said.
Sim said more than two billion people have gained
access to clean water in the last two decades and
almost two billion gained access to improved sanitation
over the same period.
"Thanks to those gains, the number of children dying
from diarrheal diseases fell from 1.5 million in 1990 to
just above 600,000 in 2012,'' he said.
However, he said hat insufficient financing and planning
mean that the Millennium Development Goal of halving
the proportion of the population without access to
toilets by 2015 will not be met.

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