Access to Sanitation
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About
The term "sanitation" can be applied to a specific aspect, concept, location or strategy, such as:
- Basic sanitation - refers to the management of human feces at the household level. This terminology is the indicator used to describe the target of the 7th Millennium Development Goal.
- On-site sanitation - the collection and treatment of waste is done where it is deposited. Examples are the use of pit latrines, septic tanks, and Imhoff tanks.
- Food sanitation - refers to the hygienic measures for ensuring food safety.
- Environmental sanitation - the control of environmental factors that form links in disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise and pollution control.
- Ecological sanitation - an approach that tries to emulate nature through the recycling of nutrients and water from human and animal wastes in a hygienically safe manner.
Definition for Millennium Development Goals
"Access to improved sanitation:
- Improved sanitation facilities are more likely to prevent human contact with human excreta than unimproved facilities. A household is considered to have access to improved sanitation if it uses improved sanitation facilities (listed below).
- Improved sanitation facilities3 include: flush or pour-flush to piped sewer system, septic tank or pit latrine; ventilated improved pit latrine; pit latrine with slab; and composting toilet.
- Unimproved sanitation facilities include: flush or pour–flush to elsewhere4 ; pit latrine without slab or open pit; bucket; hanging toilet or hanging latrine; no facilities or bush or field."[1]
The 7th Millennium Development Goal is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The World Health Organisation states:
"Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal." [2]
Almost fifty per cent of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities. Inadequate access to water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more. Repercussions can include that children, in particular girls, are denied to enjoy education because their schools lack private and decent sanitation facilities. Without WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), sustainable development is impossible.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ United Nations Statistics Division, "Millenium Development Goals Indicators", accessed on 29 June 2011, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Metadata.aspx?IndicatorId=32
- ↑ World Health Organization, "Sanitation", accessed o27 June 2011, http://www.who.int/topics/sanitation/en/
- ↑ UNICEF, "Water, Sanitation and Hyghiene: Introduction", accessed on 28 June 2011, http://www.unicef.org/wash/
