India has most people waiting for sanitation: WaterAid

So far the government has built 9.5 million toilets in the past year, close to the first-year target of 12.5 million.

According to the report, “It’s No Joke: The State of the World’s Toilets 2015”, the number of people without access to private toilets in India, the world’s second most populous nation, is more than double the runner-up on the list, China. The world’s youngest country, South Sudan, is also the country with the worst household access to sanitation globally, followed closely by Niger, Togo and Madagascar.

It’s nearly impossible for us to imagine. We rarely think twice about using the washroom.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is using World Toilet Day on Thursday to spotlight one of the least talked about and most important contributors to disease and malnutrition: poor sanitation and hygiene that affect about a third of the world’s population.

The United Nations chief went on to say that a quarter of all children under five were stunted, and countless other children, as well as adults, are falling seriously ill, often suffering long-term, even lifelong, health and developmental consequences, due to poor sanitation and hygiene. They must be culturally appropriate, environmentally sound, accessible at all times and attentive to gender. Diarrhoeal diseases such as typhoid, dysentery and cholera are rife.

Clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in.

These statistics hide the family tragedies behind each death and the loss of potential to their communities and countries.

A new changing room stands alongside the toilets so that girls can keep clean and stay in school without embarrassment.

What if this was your little girl? Before these women took action, the only usable toilets for this community were more than 2 km away.

They used to miss a week of school each month for their period – or dropped out altogether. They complained that there is a half-constructed toilet in the area, which remains shut citing power outage as the reason. Recent researches and reportings demonstrate the missing link between the practice of open defecation and stunted growth of children.

He mentioned that statistics show that the country has made zero progress in improving sanitation facilities for citizens, with urban situation being better than the rural areas.

The report finds that more than 650 million people in the world have no access to clean water and 2.3 billion don’t have access to private toilets. The corporate world has a valuable role to play by ensuring their employees have access to water, sanitation and hygiene in the workplace, respecting the human right to water and sanitation (pdf), integrating water, sanitation and hygiene into water stewardship and looking at their responsibility to help improve public health through good sanitation in the communities in which they work.