2008: the international year of sanitation

The United Nations on November 21, 2007 officially launched the International Year of Sanitation to accelerate progress for 2.6 billion people- including 980 million children- worldwide who are without proper sanitation facilities. According to the UN press release, every year inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene contribute to the deaths of 1.5 million children.
If current trends continue, the people, particularly the children, will continue to pay the price in lost lives, missed schooling, disease, malnutrition and poverty.
The International Year of Sanitation, 2008, is a theme year set by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2006 to help put this global crisis at the forefront of the international agenda. The launch of the theme year, which runs through 2008, was organised by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in collaboration with the United Nations Water Task Force on Sanitation. The thoughts expressed by the high dignitaries on this occasion signify the importance of the theme; some of the extracts included in the UN press release dated November 21, 2007 are reproduced below:
"Access to sanitation is deeply connected to virtually all the Millennium Development Goals, in particular those involving the environment, education, gender equality and the reduction of child mortality and poverty," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "An estimated 42,000 people die every week from diseases related to low water quality and an absence of adequate sanitation. This situation is unacceptable."
"Today, we go from a stage of planning to one of implementation," said Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Chairperson of the United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. "It is vital that progress is accelerated if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goal target on sanitation, and indeed the other development goals."
"Clean, safe and dignified toilet and hand-washing facilities in schools help ensure that girls get the education they need and deserve," said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. "When girls get an education, the whole community benefits. The International Year of Sanitation highlights the need for investments in proper sanitation facilities around the world."
"Sanitation is not a dirty word; it is a critical factor in human welfare and sustainable development," said Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. "We need to put the spotlight on this silent crisis."
The year will, according to the UN press release, include major regional conferences on sanitation as part of capacity-building initiatives, including one that will focus on school sanitation. It will also encourage public and private partnerships, to help tap into the comparative strengths of each sector to accelerate progress, advocate and raise awareness on sanitation, leverage additional funding, and develop country-level road maps.
Disposal of sewage, drainage, water and toilets are the main areas in which deficiencies are glaringly apparent in most of the cities, towns and villages of the country. One look at the daily newspapers is enough to judge the sanitation conditions. There are normally pictures of overflowing sewerages, missing manhole covers of sewerage lines, piles of garbage lying near schools, hospital or mosques, cooking and eating of food on the sides of open drains. These are samples of the prevailing sanitary conditions all over.
The City District Government Karachi and other city, districts' or town governments all over Pakistan, though busy in improving sanitation, need to implement special measures in line with the wishes of the United Nations for bringing health and hygiene to the people. Determined measures for disposal of sewage and solid waste, provision of adequate sewerage pipelines to carry sewage and municipal waste to the treatment plants, supply of clean potable water to the people and building of common toilets are required to be planned, financed and implemented by the civic authorities. Sanitation can be improved through public-private partnerships, community involvement and public awareness.
Under directives of the City Nazim, sanitation drives in different towns of Karachi are being organised. Sanitary workers have lifted garbage and debris from different Union Councils.
Some people throw their garbage in the streets or dispose it in open rainwater drains or open sewerage lines. A missing manhole cover or uncovered sewerage line sometimes provide temptation to the irresponsible people to easily get rid of the garbage. Apart from measures for overall sanitation, there is need for covering all open sewage drains and covering all uncovered manholes. In the recent months a number of children have lost their lives, when they accidentally fell in the uncovered sewerage or manhole in Karachi. We must protect our children.
In most of the cities, particularly in Karachi, work is going on building mega projects, particularly overhead bridges, underpasses, laying bigger sewerage lines or drinking water lines in different localities. These are important developments and must be supported.
However, at the same time more toilets may be built and kept functionally operative, uncovered sewerages may be covered and covers may also be assured on all uncovered manholes. The civic authorities may kindly note that while the funding needed for sanitation is not large, return on that investment is potentially great. Simply put, sanitation brings health and employment.
Clean water is becoming a dream for most many people in the country. In some places, piped-water being supplied is tainted with sewerage water. In other places particularly in rural areas of Sindh where water is drawn through tube-wells or hand pumps it is said to be contaminated with arsenic. Consequently, the people are affected by arsenic-induced illnesses.
The government has initiated a campaign for supplying clean water through imported costly water-filter plants being installed at union council level. The programme appears unsustainable. Instead of burdening the nation with loans, there is need to find local solutions using locally available cheap materials for abundant availability of clean water.
Arsenic contaminated water was playing with the health and lives of large number of Bangladeshi people until recently. A newspaper report, contributed by Mr Shafiq Alam, entitled " BD scientist exorcises curse of arsenic poisoning" was published by an English daily in Pakistan a few weeks ago. About half a million villagers have escaped the curse of arsenic-tainted water by using the sono filter, which virtually removes arsenic from water.
Mr Abul Hussam, an analytical chemist and university professor who was born in Kushtia district but has been living in the US since 1978, invented the filter in 2004 after devoting much of his life to finding an easy and cheap solution to arsenic contamination. Earlier this year his low-tech solution, which uses materials such as charcoal and sand to filter the water, won him the prestigious million-dollar Grainger Challenge Gold Award, made annually by the National Academy of Engineering in the United States. Mr Hussam's environ-friendly invention reportedly costs $35 only.
The Provincial Environment Minister, a few weeks ago speaking at a meeting, at Hyderabad, attended by officers from Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority and representatives of industry, reportedly said that he would hold a joint meeting of the mill owners of Kotri and elected representatives to resolve the issue of release of industrial waste of the Kotri industrial area in KB Feeder, a canal through which water is supplied to Karachi. He said that he would approach the federal government for the establishment of a water treatment plant in the industrial area to ensure the supply of clean drinking water to the area people. Water bodies and bulk supply lines need to be saved from natural or man-made contaminations.
Toilet hygiene is a public health issue. If the toilet is dirty, one tends to suppress urination or relieving oneself. Such suppressing over a period of time exposes oneself to a number of health hazards. Lack of clean toilets at convenient locations forces the people to relieve themselves in odd places. Civic authorities are urged to build more toilets in public places and make sure that the toilets are functional and clean. Industry, business and resourceful individuals are urged to build proper toilets in schools, hospitals and public areas
According to a local newspaper report, 170 experts from more than 40 countries gathered in New Delhi, India on October 31, 2007 to open a four-day World Toilet Summit aimed at finding low-cost methods to give billions of people access to sanitation. The meeting aimed to swap ideas on improving basic sanitation to stem the spread of water-borne diseases that kill millions worldwide annually.
The founder of Indian toilet advocacy charity Sulabh International, Mr Bindeshwar Pathak, opened the meeting by calling for a war-footing effort to meet 2002 Millennium Development Goals, saying "To achieve the goals, what is essential is that technology needs to be urgently developed that is suitable and simple in implementation.
Sewers or septic tanks are not the solutions." Mr Pathak, inspired by Indian freedom icon Mahatma Gandhi, began to build simple toilets in India in the 1970s and has developed a low-cost system that turns waste into water, fertiliser for crops and biogas to run generators.
A newspaper report contributed by Mr Yasir Habib Khan published in July this year in an English daily, said that Lahore city had just 70 public toilets for the use of more than 8 million persons. About half of the public toilets were non-functional while the rest of the toilets were too filthy and stinking to be used. The CDGK has been taking measures to improve hygiene and has established a number of toilets for the public.
However, the task is gigantic and becoming more difficult with population pressure on the cities and towns. It can be said that none of the cities in the country has sufficient number of toilets for general public. More work is urgently needed. Clean and functional toilets help improve the image of any country.
The universities, the scientists and the civic authorities are urged to follow the example of Mr Abul Hussam of Bangladesh, Mr Bindeshwar Pathak of India, and other pioneering scientists elsewhere and help resolve the problems faced by the people in the form of unsafe drinking water and unhygienic sanitary conditions, including lack of proper toilets. I have full confidence in our scientists and they may already have developed such devices, filters or processes for cheap solutions to water and sanitation related problems.
There is need to bring these inventions in the open. Encouragement at national level may stimulate them to devise more new things for improving sanitation at affordable cost.