OUR GLOBAL SANITATION FRAMEWORK AND WHY SANITATION?

One in five people worldwide do not have access to proper toilets. In many cases, faeces and urine end up untreated. This contaminates the environment and threatens people’s health.

The lack of toilets is a deadly crisis. Where people do not have access to clean water and sanitation, diseases spread quickly. More than one billion children under the age of five die each year from diarrhoeal diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. That is nearly 1,000 children per day, or one child almost every two minutes. This should not be normal.

For girls and women, the lack of toilets also affects their privacy and safety. They often wait until nightfall to find a quiet place out of sight to defecate. This increases the risk of being harassed or even sexually assaulted.

Without toilets in schools, children are left to defecate in the open, making them vulnerable to diarrhoeal diseases and causing them to miss lessons.

Through our surveys in the areas covered by our wash project, namely the Far North Region of Cameroon, we have found that girls in particular are affected by the lack of water and toilets, and often drop out of school or even abandon their studies altogether.