Sanitation and Public Health

Improving quality sanitation is a world-wide desire as it will; Improve human health, Produce financial benefits, Add to human dignity and social advancement, Sustain the environment, Lessen and minimize poverty. Acknowledging the impact of sanitation on public health, hardship, financial and social development and the environment, the UN General Assembly put the spotlight on the issue by declaring 2008 the international year of sanitation.

The goal is to raise awareness and to accelerate development towards the Millennium Advancement Goal (MDG): to reduce by half the percentage of people without access to standard sanitation by 2015.

A minimum of 2.6 billion people do not have access to latrines or any standard sanitation facilities. As an outcome millions struggle with a large range of preventable illness such as diarrhea which claims thousand s of lives each day, mostly young kids. Quick facts:

– Every fifteen to twenty seconds a child between 0 and 5 years passes away from diarrhea triggered by bad sanitation. •433 million school days are lost annually worldwide due to diarrhea disease.

•The total health budget that is spent on treating diarrhea diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa amounts to 12%. These budgets can be reduced by up to 88% with proper sanitation with health and hygiene benefits. •For every $1 spent on sanitation a benefit of $9 is achieved. •Failure to invest in water and sanitation, according to WHO will cost developing countries $84billion per year in lost lives, low productivity of sick workers, increased health system costs and children absent from school. •One sick person at home results in two people out of work with no income.

The end result is poverty. Preventing sanitation related diseases eliminates or minimizes poverty and positively impacts on the health budgets of countries that spend 12% of their budget on diarrhea diseases alone.