19/11/2018

WASH SDG Consortium joint statement for World Toilet Day

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Today, 19 November 2018, is World Toilet Day! The theme this year is: toilets and nature. You have probably used the toilet already without giving it much thought. Here are some facts to think about during your next visit.

Did you know?

  • Today, 4.5 billion people live without safely managed sanitation [WHO/Unicef 2017]. 1 in 3 people (2.3 billion in total!) still do not have basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines. Of these, 892 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water [WHO, 2017].

  • Lack of suitable toilets and sanitation and hygiene kills nearly 1.8 million people every year, many of them being children.

SNV

Photo from SNV, taken by Aidan Dockery

SNV

Photo from Plan Nederland

  • An average person will visit the toilet (or equivalent) more than 2,500 times in a year. For those of you with a flush toilet, an average flush can use between 1.6 gallons (6 litres) and 3.6 gallons (13.6 litres). That is a lot of fresh water going, literally, down the drain…

  • Almost 20% of the people do not wash their hands after they visit toilet. Of those that do, only 30% use soap.

  • Lack of suitable toilets and sanitation and hygiene kills nearly 1.8 million people every year, many of them being children.

  • 30,000 trees are used every day to make toilet paper for the world supply.

SNV

Photo from Plan Nederland

SNV

Photo from Plan Nederland

The WASH SDG programme aims to sustainably improve access to, and use of, safe drinking water for at least 450,000 people, sanitation for at least 2 million people and improve the hygiene behaviours of 1.6 million people before the end of 2022. The programme is implemented in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. We will use the WHO UNICEF JMP sanitation ladder to measure progress in the coming years.

Notes
1 Contact Sharon Roose at sroose@snv.org for more information on SNV-specific activities within the WASH SDG Consortium.
2 Contact Eva Duarte at washsdg@simavi.nl for general information on the consortium programme.

Photo: (banner) SNV-organised urban sanitation exposure visit in Jhenaidah (SNV/ Sardar Lutful Kabir).