World Toilet Day banner.
I've written before about why I've twinned my loo with one in Liberia, but today is World Toilet Day so here are some statistics about the Cord and Tearfund Toilet Twinning campaign.
"Lack of access to clean water and effective sanitation impacts the health of a community as well as their ability to develop economically. Here are some of the hard facts:
- "2.5 billion people across the world don’t have somewhere safe to go to the toilet (WHO / UNICEF)
- Bad sanitation is one of the world’s biggest killers: it hits women, children, old and sick people hardest
- Every minute, three children under the age of five die because of dirty water and poor sanitation (WHO)
- Right now, more than 50 per cent of hospital beds in developing countries are filled with people who have an illness caused by poor sanitation or dirty water (UNDP)
- In Africa, half of young girls who drop out of school do so because they need to collect water – often from many miles away – or because the school hasn’t got a basic toilet.
- The lack of a loo makes women and girls a target for sexual assault as they go to the toilet in the open, late at night
- Many women get bitten by snakes as they squat in the grass to go to the toilet
- For every £1 spent on a water and sanitation programme, £8 is returned through saved time, increased productivity and reduced health costs. (UNDP)
- In 2000, 189 countries signed up to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The sanitation target for 2015 is currently way off-target and won’t be met in sub-Sharan African until the 23rd century."
On November 19th last year 96 toilets were twinned. This year the target is 100. Right now (09:40) the counter on the Toilet Twinning website is at 16. Here's the latrine in Liberia that my loo is twinned with.
Toilet Twinning certificate.
There are more ways to help on the WaterAid UK site.