tagged w/ Sanitation
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The banana leaf tampon is all the rage for menstruating women from Sweden to Singapore to Sierra Leone. This made-to-measure tampon is the latest in sustainable gadgetry and a breakthrough in global female sanitary provision, affordable for women even in the most remote parts of the developing world. This is the friend we have all been waiting for. It will help women in rural communities achieve their full potential and take part in all aspects of society. Hail the banana leaf tampon. Here’s how to make one of your own.The banana leaf tampon is all the rage for menstruating women from Sweden to Singapore... more
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When I started this blog several years ago these were the main areas of concern surrounding lack of access and potability of water in the world. And as with the climate crisis there have been many people out here talking about this and trying to educate people in doing what is necessary to provide this human right to all and warning of the consequences of not doing so. Unfortunately, though we have come some part of the way thanks to education, activism and the work of NGOs like Charity Water and others whose links I will also post here there is a long way to go.
As we are now seeing across the globe privitization is still trying to make more of a headway (even though we have seen initiatives in Germany, Italy and in the US in stopping this insidious move to control our global water supply) and moving to "commoditize" water in a market system sure to deprive the most poor of this basic human right even though it was declared so at the UN.
War is also playing a part. As a result of the tumultuous battles taking place in Libya the Great Manmade River Project started by Gaddafi (and this is not to be a political post so I will refrain from discussing opinions of him) which regardless of politics was and is an engineering marvel (I will post video on that here too) has been bombed and essentially shut down thereby cutting off water to more than half of Tripoli and other regions. Water is then still being used as a weapon of war which I find insidious regardless of who does it.
We are seeing as well increasing pollution levels in rivers, continued toxification of our oceans, acidification of our oceans, plastic garbage patches in our ocean's gyres that stretch for miles and on top of all of this, effects of a changing climate brought on by human activity that now threaten water supplies for billions of people worldwide and the systems that sustain our marinelife.
What are we to make of all of this? Are we finally reaching the point where more people will discover just how crucial water is to all of the systems that sustain us? If not, by the time critical mass is reached will it be beyond saving? For the next couple of weeks I will be writing and reporting on ways that we are affecting water and also ways we can save it. In the world we live in now water access has never been more of an urgent crisis.
That is why supporting organizations like Chartity Water are essential in working to provide equality, access and potability of water to the billions who now go without and that also includes adequate sanitation. It is unfathomable to believe that in the 21st century with all of the technological advances we have achieved that we still cannot provide basic sanitation and potable water for the people who live on this planet, even now as we explore other worlds. I say, let's take better care of the one we have now.
Please watch this video and look at the links to other organizations I will post here and reflect on what you can do to address this crisis locally and globally. Water is the one tie that binds us all. We cannot afford to lose it.
More at the link.When I started this blog several years ago these were the main areas of concern... more
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This film tells the story of three people and their relationship with water in the towns and villages on the edge of Delhi, India.
The landscape of these "peri-urban" zones has changed dramatically in the past 15 years. Poor people often do not have good enough access to water, and have to find different ways of getting and using it.
This film shows the ingenuity and determination of three people - a grandmother, a farmer and an activist - who have taken action to get better water for themselves and their families.
More info: http://www.steps-centre.org/filmsThis film tells the story of three people and their relationship with water in the... more
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Desperately poor Haiti is finding a cheap source of fuel in recycling human excrement, a move that could help put a dent in a cholera epidemic and slow the country's pervasive deforestation.
The "biodigester", which converts organic waste to biogas and a liquid fertilizer rich in nutrients, requires little infrastructure: toilets linked to a sealed, brick-lined well connected to a basin. Seventy of these devices are up and running, while another 70 are in the works.
Deprived of air, the bacteria thriving in human excrement eat 85 percent of the refuse while producing methane gas, explained Martin Wartchow, pointing his lighter above a small tube hanging out of the rank. A powerful flame was immediately set ablaze.
"The remaining 15 percent of organic waste is thrown out with the excess water in a green area where they biodegrade," continued the hydrologist, who is working with the Brazilian nongovernmental group Viva Rio in Port-au-Prince.
"Not a single chemical product is used and at the end of the line, the water we collect is completely clean."
The engineer plunged his hand in a basin filled with filtered, clear and, incredibly, odorless liquid. "We even raise fish here."
Recently completed at a Viva Rio center that hosts over 600 young Haitians each day, the installation is due to be linked to a cafeteria under construction to replace wood coals.
Indeed, engineers behind the project hope to reverse Haitians' heavy reliance on wood fuel for cooking and heating due to the lack of cheap sources of energy in the country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere.
As a result, Haiti has seen rapid deforestation. Only 1.5 percent of the western portion of the isle of Hispaniola the country shares with the Dominican Republic is now covered with forests, a massive decrease from 80 percent when discovered by Christopher Columbus in the 15th century.
"The United Nations have funded many studies to find solutions to replace wood coals. But all they had to do was to go to Nicaragua or China," said Wartchow.
In Nicaragua, some 70,000 biodigesters have already been built, and 1,000 times more in China.
The system, just now being implemented in Haiti, also provides a solution to simply and efficiently treat human excrement -- a major problem in the squalid tent cities that sprung up after the devastating January 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 250,000 Haitians and left 1.3 million homeless.
The cholera epidemic exposed the dramatic consequences of Haiti's lack of a true sewage system. The water-borne bacterial disease, which thrives in unhygienic conditions, has claimed 4,700 dead so far.
"Since the epidemic, we have had many requests from clinics that had thrown their waste into the canals until then," said Wartchow.
But once a biodigester installed, there is still much work to do, especially in educating locals to using the new devices. In February, several of the installations
cont.Desperately poor Haiti is finding a cheap source of fuel in recycling human excrement,... more
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This year's theme for World Water Day is Water For Cities. More people are moving to urban areas, the majority of this migration taking place in the developing world. This is in part due to expansion of corporate landgrabs, deforestation, overpopulation and effects of biodistress that push people into urban areas looking for a way to survive as agriculture which is the main way of life is impacted greatly.
Three quarters of our population is predicted to be living in cities by 2050 which will put a tremendous strain on infrastructure, water quality, water access and sanitation, which then leads to an increase in waterborne diseases.
Access to clean water is the moral challenge of our time and our right. So please, tomorrow take time to reflect upon the importance of clean water, water access and sanitation for those in our world lacking it. We take so much for granted here in America regarding water and the ability to have sanitation that leads to better health.
This site lists events globally and I will be posting about events in this thread as well as listing organizations working to provide clean water and sanitation and how you can help, as well as other entries about the importance of this most beautiful life giving resource.
Please feel free also to add poems, videos, comments, etc.about water here and make a pledge that for this and the next generation we will work to see all with clean water that revives our bodies and souls. This is one way that can lead people out of poverty and into a world of health and peace.
Thank you
http://current.com/groups/water-is-life/This year's theme for World Water Day is Water For Cities. More people are moving... more
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When rivers die, so do we.
Excerpt:
"Animal carcasses are not to be dumped into the river, washermen should not use chemicals to wash dirty clothes, the river bank is not to be used as a toilet and no polythene bags — these are among the measures villagers in Rajpura, in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, have planned as part of their campaign to clean up the polluted Yamuna.
Hundreds of villagers from Rajpura, a few kilometres upstream of Vrindavan in Mathura district, on Sunday pledged support to the campaign to save the Yamuna river from pollution and make its water potable.
With people from 73 villages in the district joining, the campaign has become the biggest public initiative in the region against river pollution.
The man who leads the campaign is Mathura’s Chief Development Officer Ajay Shankar Pandey who, during his earlier stint in Ghaziabad, had changed the profile of the polluted Hindon river.
Talking to IANS, Mr. Pandey said: “We told the villagers not to wait for others for what they could on their own. It is about saving a dying river, a holy river at that. A series of meetings and interactions with the village leaders and activists helped us draw up a plan of action. We are now putting that into practice.”
“We are confident that once the villagers lead and show the way, the city people will not remain idle spectators but will get involved,” Mr. Pandey added.
A super body called the Yamuna Mitra Panchayat will oversee the operation river clean-up.
“A whole lot of agencies have been roped in, including the panchayti department at each block as well as at the district headquarters and the departments of village development, irrigation, horticulture and fisheries. They will coordinate with the Yamuna Mitra Panchayat to ensure the success of the mission,” a confident Mr. Pandey said.
Each village will have a committee with the pradhan as the chairman. The committee will have three members — two panchayat members and either the panchayat secretary or any one interested in water conservation.
Yamuna enters Mathura district near Chondrash village and passes through Banger, Raipur Banger, Tilak Garhi, Barka, Chonki Banger, Bhadaiya and Madaur. After Saraisal the river enters Agra district.
Despite being one of the most sacred rivers in India, the Yamuna in Mathura presents a picture of total neglect.
Court petitions have led to the construction of the Gokul Barrage in Mathura. However, it has not made any difference to Yamuna’s pollution. The river runs like a huge sewage canal transporting industrial effluents and municipal waste.
According to Mr. Pandey’s plan, the committee will ensure animal carcasses are not thrown into the river. Washermen will not be allowed to use chemicals to wash dirty clothes in the Yamuna. One pond in each village will be marked for washing clothes.
The committee will also stop people from constructing latrines or using river banks as toilets."
continuedWhen rivers die, so do we.
Excerpt:
"Animal carcasses are not to be... more
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Friday is usually anything but a crap day, but today is not just any Friday - today is the day we celebrate the World Toilet Day (see what we did there?).Essentially, the founders of this awareness day want us all to give a s**t, about s**t.So here are some hard facts that you might never have heard:
More people have died due to poor water and sanitation than in all the wars of the 20th century combined.
2.6 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation which kills 1.8 million people, mostly children every year.
Diarrhea diseases kill five times as many children in the developing world as HIV/AIDS, that means 5,000 children dying every day.
To create a bit of a stir about this the clever people over at www.flushtracker.com has created the best invention since sliced bread and bog roll - a poo tracker - a website that allows you to track your poo on its journey through the sewer system and into the unknown. Apart from being a hilarious way to start your morning the point of this exercise is to highlight the greatness of our sewage system, something we are fortunate to have but something most people in the world still don't have access to. Earlier this year we sent our Vanguard reporter Adam Yamaguchi to India, Singapore and Indonesia to see what is being done about sanitation.
Friday is usually anything but a crap day, but today is not just any Friday -... more
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http://www/circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/hold-cholera-in-haiti-the-climate-connection
After lying dormant in Haiti for half a century, a three-week-old cholera outbreak has killed more than 700 people and is advancing across the country. On Tuesday, the epidemic reached Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and largest city, where more than a million people are still squatting in over-crowded tent camps and sharing scant latrines. Hurricane Tomás, meanwhile, struck Haiti’s shores on Friday, flooding vulnerable tent camps. Reported infections have climbed close to 10,000 cases — nearly doubling in the last week.
“I don’t think we are going to see the end of it any time soon,” Emmanuelle Schneider of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Circle of Blue. “It’s very contagious and it can spread fast.”
Cholera, a water-borne disease, can spread rampantly when clean water and proper sanitation are not available, as had been the case in Haiti long before the January earthquake that killed 250,000 and displaced 1.6 million. But the damage from the earthquake, which hit hardest in Port-au-Prince, could be the compounding factor that allowed cholera to rise from the rubble.
Researchers, health officials and the media are all seeking answers to the same question: where did the cholera bacteria come from?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the strain of cholera that is spreading in Haiti originated in Southeastern Asia. That finding prompted news organizations to focus on humanitarian workers as the source of infection, an assertion that medical specialists quickly discounted. A handful of activists, in addition, blame the outbreak on Haiti’s substandard housing since the quake.
snip
“They have been fortunate in Haiti that for 50 years the conditions have been such that they haven’t had an intense increase in cholera bacterial populations,” said Rita Colwell, professor at the University of Maryland and former director of the National Science Foundation. “But they’ve had an earthquake, they’ve had destruction, they’ve had a hurricane. So the conditions would lead to a very high probability of an outbreak.”
She added: “I think it’s very unfortunate to look for a scapegoat. It is an environmental phenomenon that is involved. The reason we don’t know [the catalyst] is because the medical community is not receptive to climactic causation or correlation.”
The Climate Connection
Cholera is an intestinal bacterial infection spread by eating food or drinking water that has been contaminated.
Although rural areas experienced less damage from the earthquake, they were the first epicenter of the epidemic. The small communities along the Artibonite River, located 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, have been using the river as a source of drinking and bathing water — until reports came that the river is the likely source of the outbreak.
“Cholera was originally in the Artibonite River,” Schneider said. “But people are very mobile, so they are moving from place to place, which is a trigger for the cholera epidemic.”
In the last few decades, great strides have been made in unlocking the riddles associated with cholera and seasonal climate patterns. Dr. Colwell was among the first to find that cholera epidemics flare up during the wet spring and fall seasons, when excess precipitation creates favorable environmental conditions such as increased salinity and warmer temperatures in areas already suffering from poor sanitation and lack of clean water access.
Colwell and her colleagues are studying 75 years of cycles in India and hope to have definitive parameters in the next few months. Additionally, using weather data from 1991-1992 and 1997-1998, they have shown that there is a correlation between cholera outbreaks in Latin America and El Niño climate patterns.
The intent of her research is to predict cholera outbreaks using the link between weather patterns, water surface temperatures and plankton blooms — all of which could be detected using remote sensing satellites. An early warning system for coastal dwellers would have been valuable for Haiti.
Afsar Ali, an associate professor of environmental and global health at the University of Florida, agrees with the environmental climate conclusion. He told the Tampa Bay News that the cholera outbreak is happening now, rather than immediately following the earthquake in January, because the water temperature is warmer. And since the first cases of cholera were reported in a coastal city, Ali believes that residents had longtime immunity, whereas the estimated 300,000 refugees who moved to the Artibonite region after the earthquake did not.
Even before the earthquake, there were risk factors for water-borne disease. More than 40 percent of Haiti’s total population did not have a source of reliable drinking water, according to a study by the United Nations. And nearly half of rural Haitians were defecating in the open, according to a joint study by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
snip
Colwell, who this year was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, has studied the link between cholera and climate for the last 30 years. Her research has disproven the long-held belief that cholera could only enter the environment due to a release of sewage, and has proven that there is a link between changes in the natural environment and the spread of disease.
conthttp://www/circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/hold-cholera-in-haiti-the-climate-conn... more
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Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water." But that's what we're still doing every day.
The one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Yet it is still common around much of the world. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water -- both surface and underground -- unsafe for drinking.
The current engineering concept for dealing with human waste is to use vast quantities of water to wash it away, preferably into a sewer system, where it may or may not be treated before being discharged into the local river. The "flush and forget" system takes nutrients originating in the soil and typically dumps them into the nearest body of water. Not only are the nutrients lost from agriculture, but the nutrient overload has contributed to the death of many rivers and to the formation of some 405 "dead zones" in ocean coastal regions. This outdated system is expensive and water-intensive, disrupts the nutrient cycle, and can be a major source of disease and death. Worldwide, poor sanitation and personal hygiene claim the lives of some 2 million children per year, a toll that is one-third the size of the 6 million lives claimed by hunger and malnutrition.
Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in India argues convincingly that a water-based disposal system with sewage treatment facilities is neither environmentally nor economically viable for India. She notes that an Indian family of five, producing 250 liters of excrement in a year and using a water flush toilet, contaminates 150,000 liters of water when washing away its wastes.
As currently designed, India’s sewer system is actually a pathogen-dispersal system. It takes a small quantity of contaminated material and uses it to make vast quantities of water unfit for human use. With this system, Narain says, both "our rivers and our children are dying." India’s government, like that of many developing countries, is hopelessly chasing the goal of universal water-based sewage systems and sewage treatment facilities -- unable to close the huge gap between services needed and provided, but unwilling to admit that it is not an economically viable option.
Fortunately, there is a low-cost alternative: the composting toilet. This is a simple, waterless, odorless toilet linked to a small compost facility and sometimes a separate urine collecting facility. Collected urine can be trucked to nearby farms, much as fertilizer is. The dry composting converts human fecal material into a soil-like humus, which is essentially odorless and is scarcely 10 percent of the original volume. These facilities need to be emptied every year or so, depending on design and size. Vendors periodically collect the humus and market it as a soil supplement, thus ensuring that the nutrients and organic matter return to the soil, reducing the need for energy-intensive fertilizer.
This technology sharply reduces residential water use compared with flush toilets, thus cutting water bills and lowering the energy needed to pump and purify water. As a bonus, it also reduces garbage flow if table wastes are incorporated, eliminates the sewage water disposal problem, and restores the nutrient cycle. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now lists several brands of dry compost toilets approved for use. Pioneered in Sweden, these toilets work well under the widely varying conditions in which they are now used, including Swedish apartment buildings, U.S. private residences, and Chinese villages. For many of the 2.5 billion people who lack improved sanitation facilities, composting toilets may be the answer.
Rose George, author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, reminds us why the "flush and forget" system is an energy guzzler. One, it takes energy to deliver large quantities of drinking-quality water (up to 30 percent of household water usage is for flushing). Two, it takes energy -- and lots of it -- to operate a sewage treatment facility.
In summary, there are several reasons why the advanced design composting toilets deserve top priority: spreading water shortages, rising energy prices, rising carbon emissions, shrinking phosphate reserves, a growing number of sewage-fed oceanic dead zones, the rising healthcare costs of sewage-dispersed intestinal diseases, and the rising capital costs of "flush and forget" sewage disposal systems.
Once a toilet is separated from the water use system, recycling household water becomes a much simpler process. For cities, the most effective single step to raise water productivity is to adopt a comprehensive water treatment/recycling system, reusing the same water continuously. With this system, which is much simpler if sewage is not included in the waste water, only a small percentage of water is lost to evaporation each time it cycles through. Given the technologies that are available today, it is quite possible to recycle the urban water supply indefinitely, largely removing cities as a claimant on scarce water resources.
cont.Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose... more
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Hundreds of Haitian protestors marched in the city of Mirabelais, toward the NATO base which housed Nepalese nationals and demanded they leave the country.
As of Friday morning, the disease left 330 dead and 4700 hospitalized.
Experts have not yet been able to identify the origin of the epidemic, but several are guessing that the disease arrived from the outside. Up until this month, not a single case of cholera has been diagnosed in Haiti since the middle of the 20th century, according to Claire-Lise Chaignant, head of the global task force on cholera control at the World Health Organization.Hundreds of Haitian protestors marched in the city of Mirabelais, toward the NATO base... more
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A cholera epidemic spread in central Haiti on Friday as aid groups rushed doctors and supplies to fight the country's worst health crisis since January's earthquake. Nearly 200 deaths had been confirmed and more than 2,000 people were ill.
The first two cases of the disease outside the rural Artibonite region were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town that is closer to the quake-devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.
Officials are concerned the outbreak could reach the squalid tarp camps where hundreds of thousands of quake survivors live in the capital.
"It will be very, very dangerous," said Claude Surena, president of the Haitian Medical Association. "Port-au-Prince already has more than 2.4 million people, and the way they are living is dangerous enough already."
The Ministry of Health confirmed 194 deaths and 2,364 cases of cholera, said Imogen Wall, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
"It's concentrated in Artibonite right now and we're doing our best to keep it that way," Wall said.
Dozens of patients lay on the floor awaiting treatment at the St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, some of them brushing away flies on mattresses stained with human feces.
One of them, 55-year-old Jille Sanatus, had been there since his son Jordany brought him Thursday night. A doctor was struggling to stick a needle into his arm.
"He's completely dehydrated, so it's difficult. It's hard to find the vein," said Dr. Roasana Casimir, who had been working nearly without rest since the outbreak began two days earlier.
Casimir finally penetrated the vein and fluid from an IV bag began to trickle in, but half an hour later the father of 10 was dead. Two hospital employees carried the body to the morgue behind the hospital and placed it on the ground for the family to reclaim for a funeral.
Sanatus' son said the family had been drinking water from a river running down from the central plateau region. Health Minister Alex Larsen said Friday that the river tested positive for cholera.
Wall said the sick patients and the contagious remains of the dead were insufficiently quarantined.
"Part of the problem has been people are moving around a lot, and there hasn't been proper isolation in place at the clinics," she said.
The sick come from across the desolate Artibonite Valley, a region that received thousands of refugees following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people and destroyed the capital 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of St. Marc. Most of the new arrivals have been taken in by host families.
In addition to the two cholera cases confirmed by the health ministry in Arcahaie, the International Medical Corps said it was investigating other possible cases in Croix-des-Bouquet, a suburb of the capital. Radio reports also said there were two dozen cases of diarrhea on Gonave island.
Cholera was not present in Haiti before the earthquake, but experts had warned that conditions were ripe for disease to strike in areas with limited access to clean water.
"You cannot say it is because of the earthquake, but because of the earthquake the situation here requires a high level of attention in case the epidemic extends," said Michel Thieren, a program officer for the Pan-American Health Organization.
cont.A cholera epidemic spread in central Haiti on Friday as aid groups rushed doctors and... more
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When the 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) affirmed last week that the right to water and sanitation was a basic human right, the consensus resolution was described as a "historic first" for the U.N.’s premier human rights body based in Geneva.
"This landmark decision has the potential to change the lives of billions of human beings who still lack access to water and sanitation," claimed Catarina de Albuquerque, a U.N. independent expert on human rights obligations.
What this means, Albuquerque explained, is that the right to water and sanitation is equal to all other human rights - and is therefore legally binding and enforceable in existing human rights treaties.
The consensus resolution was a logical follow-up to a key General Assembly resolution adopted last July which also - for the first time - recognised water and sanitation as basic human rights.
But in reality water and sanitation have remained two of the most neglected sub-texts of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which came under scrutiny at the MDG summit here last month.
At this much-ballyhooed summit, world leaders adopted a plan of action - officially called the ‘outcome document’ - which recognised the obstacles thwarting the MDGs and offered pledges and commitments to reach the defined goals by the targeted date: 2015.
The primary goals and sub-goals include a reduction by 50 percent the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger, the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, the elimination of gender inequality, and the reduction by half the proportion of people without access to water and sanitation.
Currently, over 800-900 million people have no access to safe drinking water and over 2.6 billion people are living without adequate sanitation.
While most developing nations have made limited progress in providing clean water, the targets for sanitation remain virtually unreachable.
"If current trends continue unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation MDG target by almost one billion people," warns U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.
In an interview with IPS, Jon Lane, executive director of the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), said he sees visible signs of progress since 1.3 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990.
Still, he says, "the pace is too slow to allow the world to meet the MDG target on sanitation."
"There are many reasons for this slow pace," Lane said, "but the main one is that political leaders in developed and developing countries have not grasped the fundamental role that good sanitation plays for people’s health, dignity, economic well-being and local environment."
Success with sanitation would bring a huge swag of benefits, plus it would support the achievement of other MDG targets on child and maternal mortality, education, and poverty reduction, among others, he added.
Jamie Bartram, director of the Water Institute at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, told IPS the MDG targets for water and sanitation are "wildly under-ambitious".
The idea that anything less than water and sanitation in every home is a serious target in today’s world is astonishing and binds millions in poverty, he pointed out.
"Today’s MDG targets focus on water and sanitation for households. But these essential needs are required elsewhere too - in schools, workplaces and markets for example," said Bartram.
The idea that it is possible to deliver effective health care services without reliable and safe water and sanitation makes no sense, but yet it is the reality of many health facilities.
"It is often said that sanitation lags water. Yet, if we use as simple benchmarks their availability at home, then we see that water lags sanitation and both are available for only around half of humankind," Bartram noted.
He also said that water and sanitation offer rare opportunities to make progress across the MDG agenda, yet have not attracted the attention they deserve.
Asked if the outcome document adopted by the U.N. summit last week offers any hope, Lane, of the WSSCC, told IPS the document makes note of sanitation 17 times. "This is good, and an improvement over the past." Remember, sanitation was not originally an MDG target, he said.
However, it remains to be seen whether the outcome document as a whole is concrete enough to accelerate progress so that the target is reached.
What’s missing, Lane pointed out, is a reference to hygiene practices: hand washing with soap can save one million lives per year - mostly children in developing countries.
Fortunately, there is momentum in the sector and sanitation’s profile is rising, thanks in part to new initiatives like the Global Sanitation Fund operated by WSSCC and the new Sanitation and Water for All initiative, a multi-stakeholder network reaching out directly to finance ministers, among others.
Pointing out existing deficiencies, Bartram told IPS there is still far too much focus on building new systems, sources and supplies, and too little on keeping them working.
"The allure of opening a new facility far outweighs the prosaic task of keeping them working, but we see a large proportion of all hand pumps [for example] out of action at any one time, and investing in sustaining systems offers more bang for the buck."
He said maintaining and extending effective water supply is challenged by other demands for water for agriculture, and by other threats, such as climate change.
"It is imperative that after 2015, water and sanitation are part of the international development agenda not as part of environmental protection but as key motors for health and development in their own right," said Bartram.When the 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) affirmed last week that the right to... more
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Vanguard correspondent and executive producer Adam Yamaguchi talks about shooting "The World's Toilet Crisis," the worst assignment he ever gave himself, making a rookie travel mistake that got him sick, and the dangers of getting desensitized to open defecation.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.Vanguard correspondent and executive producer Adam Yamaguchi talks about shooting... more
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Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi travels to India, Singapore and Indonesia to understand why people don't use toilets and what's being done to end the practice of open defecation.
An estimated 2.6 billion people, about 40% of the world's population, have no access to toilets and defecate anywhere they can. As a result, more than 2 million people -- including 1.5 million children -- die from complications of chronic diarrhea.
When human waste isn't contained or flushed down the toilet, it's everywhere -- in streets, open fields and, most dangerously, in the very water people drink. Adam investigates how countries are trying to solve an epidemic that few people want to talk about -- the world's toilet crisis.
"Vanguard" is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi travels to India, Singapore and Indonesia to... more
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+ This was a hard story to get myself psyched about doing. Hard to look forward to being surrounded by shit
+ Raw sewage = everything that you flush down your toilet. The toilet paper breaks down, shit breaks into tiny pieces, ends up here
+ Sewage goes through several treatment processes, and the ‘cleaned’ water is piped 5 miles into ocean
+ India has a population of 1.14 billion people; 600 million don’t have toilets. [Read more from producer Lisa Biagiotti here.]
+ India has the second highest toiletless population in the world, behind China
+ This river runs through the heart of the city. It’s not far removed from where many people live
+ The smell was completely overwhelming. Was hard to breathe.
+ I think i had bad food and bad water that morning, so I’m already feeling pretty shitty
+ I made the stupid mistake of making a protein shake using tap water..smart, I know.
+ It was like there was a layer of bubbling scum on the water
+ Not sure what was worse, staying on toxic river, or wandering onto shit-covered ground
+ There goes my chocolate protein shake! My producers were very happy as I threw up [Watch more from Adam about how he got sick.]
+ And an FYI, I did immediately deliver some articulate standups right after I threw up, and interviewed a couple folks
+ That was just day 2 of my trip!
+ Slums exist just underneath the shadow of massive construction across the cities
+ Met a man who was defecating up on the train tracks, ear nearly sliced off by oncoming train. The defacto slum toilet is the train tracks
+ We only saw one person in the public toilet, which people have to pay per use
+ Shooting in the slum was very difficult. Very chaotic, narrow spaces to navigate
+ This is what it means when people talk about lack of clean, fresh water. There’s shit in the water.
+ While filming, we saw a child fall into the sewer
+ That wall right behind this man is a home
+ Haryana state has started a program called ‘no toilet, no bride’ which encourages women to demand toilets when marriages are arranged
+ lack of toilets is not just an issue of poverty; money often gets diverted to other priorities
+ Dr Pathak runs a kitchen powered by methane (giant fart)
+ He gives these dried shit balls to school children to play with. The shitballs are dried/decomposed, so it’s not hazardous to touch
+ Jack Sim wants to make toilets “sexy.” He grew up in Singapore when it was very poor and toiletless. Today, cleanest place in the world.
+ Jack Sim named his org the WTO, in hopes he’d get sued, and bring publicity to toilets
+ These waterways are right in the heart of Surabaya, 2nd largest city in Indonesia
+ At sunrise and sunset, people come out to defecate
+ We’d often see people defecating in the river, see kids swimming, and men fishing 20 meters away
+ A preferred method of defecating is on suspended beams over rivers; downstream, people drink the same water
+ People like Sumadi are making cheap toilets and is trying to help jake create toilet shops as ubiquitous as 7-11s
+ In many villages, having a toilet has become something akin to having a Mercedes or an LV purse
+ This is where we get dirty
+ “Hey, lemme show you cesspool of feces in my backyard”
+ In case you’re wondering, they made me wear that ridiculous shirt – my uniform to work. And it smelled like shit
+ I dropped our microphone cover in the canister of shit
+ The moment I’d been waiting for this entire shoot: to play with shit
+ It took days to get all the crud out from underneath my fingernails
+ It was hard not to laugh at times, but this anti-defecation ceremony was a big deal, an important milestone
+ During the shoot, we went into dozens of homes to look at toilets. Most people beamed with pride when showing them
+ Villagers sometimes catalog and collect all the defecation in the village, transport to town square, to show how much shit is out there
+ Part of Ruli’s job is to make people feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed about openly defecating
+ Most of the people in this Indonesian village shit outside, or by waterways
+ Ruli demonstrates how flies collect on shit, shits gets onto food and water
+ I need to throw away the shoes I wore on this toilet shoot
+ Indonesia felt like a sauna/steam room. This was the first time I’d worked out in 2 weeks
+ Rumyati is the community health leader, but even she has problems getting her son to stop openly defecating
+ Rumyati had a Sid Vicious sticker, next to an Osama bin Laden sticker, on her cupboard
+ This was like home #30 whose toilet I inspected
+ It’s a major challenge to get people to respect their environment and stop polluting
+ For the record, Los Angeles is not open-defecation free
+ Homage to the toilet!
+ Jack Sim believes finding celebrity spokespeople to push toilets is key in raising awareness about this public health issue
+ Oh look, it's Russell Brand. Here's why I think his co-star Jonah Hill should be named World Toilet Spokesperson. [Read Adam's blog here.]
Watch more from Adam about shooting "The World's Toilet Crisis" -- including why he really threw up -- after the jump.+ This was a hard story to get myself psyched about doing. Hard to look forward to... more
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In your travels have you come across toilets you weren’t used to? Have you ever found yourself without access to toilets altogether? How did the community you visited handle the complex issues tied to public health when it came to open defecation?
For inspiration, check out this sneak peek at Adam Yamaguchi's Vanguard episode, "World's Toilet Crisis," airing on Current TV Wednesday, June 9 at 10/9c.
http://current.com/groups/current-video/92471289_how-to-solve-the-worlds-toilet-crisis.htmIn your travels have you come across toilets you weren’t used to? Have you ever... more
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There are more people living in India that openly defecate than the entire continent of Africa. Sanitation and hygiene education and access are imperative to providing healthy living conditions in much of India and providing for a cleaner, healthier world. Some progress is being made in some villages, but this crisis is still effecting much of the population. And India is not alone in this.
Sanitation, hygiene, water access, water equity, education... all key elements in lifting developing countries out of poverty and disease and bringing hope to women and girls to provide them with a future. In the 21st century, it is shameful this is still a crisis. With all of our resources millions of people still have no access to dignity or to a clean water source.
This has been a true failure of humanity.
We should be taking better care of our planet, and each other.There are more people living in India that openly defecate than the entire continent... more
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In an exclusive sneak peek from this coming season of Vanguard, correspondent Adam Yamaguchi investigates one of the world's biggest public health crises: the 2.6 billion people living without toilets. The episode premieres on Current TV on June 9.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
Watch more at http://current.com/vanguard.In an exclusive sneak peek from this coming season of Vanguard, correspondent Adam... more
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