World Toilet Day: Sanitation Conditions Deteriorate

The objective of two of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced at a summit in 2000, was to reduce the proportion of world population having no access to clean water and basic sanitation facilities by half.

The situation however is far worse now than it was in 2000 as "the effort to provide sanitation is not keeping up with the population growth," says Dr. Zafar Adeel, Chair UN Water. The main difficulty in tackling the situation effectively, according to Dr. Adeel, has been the governments' lack of investment in basic sanitation because they are not fully convinced about it being a basic human necessity. The success with water programmes however has been much more than with those relating to sanitation.

World Toilet Day is being observed internationally on 19 November.