If toilets meet children’s needs, this will keep them in school longer, reduce the spread of life-threatening diarrhoeal diseases and help meet development goals, according to the charity Water For People.
At least 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have proper sanitation facilities. The combined effects of improper sanitation, unsafe water supply and poor hygiene are estimated to cause almost 2,000 child deaths per day, the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, reports.
“Allowing youth to become comfortable using toilets and practising good hygiene from a young age, means that as they grow up there are fewer people to educate and convince of the reasons that improved toilets are important,” said Kate Fogelberg, Water For People’s regional manager in South America.
“It’s much more difficult to change adult behaviour than children’s behaviour — solving the sanitation crisis is as much about changing people’s behaviour as it is about installing toilets.”
Governments are not on course to meet the Millennium Development Goal(MDG) target of halving the proportion of the population without sanitation by 2015 — one of eight targets agreed in 2000 by U.N. member states.
