World Toilet Day: 2.5 Billion People Live Without Proper Sanitation

Added by James Morley on November 20, 2010

November 19 is World Toilet Day, a day that will highlight the problems associated with millions of people around the world living without proper sanitation.

The day will see many events taking place in all corners of the world aiming at helping the estimated 2.5 billion people who does not have access to proper toilet facilities.

One event in Western Georgia will see the first public indoor urine diverting dry toilets opened at a kindergarten in Khamiskuri, Khobi district.

The previously used, outdoor pit latrines posed a lot of problems, according to a spokesman for the World Toilet Day, who said the latrines are often located far from the school building, and cause many health risks during the harsh Caucasian winters: “Visiting the pit latrines is often so unhealthy that teachers and nurses rather prefer the children to defecate out in the open.”

In another event arranged by the Australian Red Cross and bathroom brand Caroma, launching their I Love My Bathroom fundraising campaign, commuters were confronted with ten people reading the paper on the toilet in Wynyard Park, Sydney.

The event served to raise awareness and to make people think twice about toilets: “People who don’t have access to toilets also don’t have access to water, so people defecate in the bush, they defecate around the back of their homes, children play in it, they don’t make the link between faeces and disease.”

Lack of sanitation and dirty water is the second-most common cause of death amongst children around the world.