Sanitation for all on World Toilet Day

Half of all people in developing countries have an illness related to sanitation and water quality; and every six seconds, a child dies of diarrhoea.

World Toilet Day on 19th November reminds us that over 2.6 billion people lack any form of 'improved' sanitation; one-sixth of the world's population get their water from sources contaminated by human and animal feces; half of all people in developing countries have an illness related to sanitation and water quality; and every six seconds, a child dies of diarrhoea.

This situation is worsened during times of conflict or natural disasters, which create large numbers of refugees in need of basic life-support facilities, including access to sanitation and safe drinking water.

A recent paper in CIWEM's Water and Environment Journal (WEJ) argues that excreta disposal in emergencies is often a low priority and so leads to the provision of unsuitable on-site sanitation systems.

This then weakens the defence against the transmission of diseases.

R A Fenner, FCIWEM, and P M Guthrie OBE, believe that time and resource constraints during emergency situations lead to the use of inappropriate systems.

In an African rural emergency, the immediate solution is to organise open defecation fields, where a grid system is drawn on the ground and each refugee uses a slot by squatting over it.

This short term solution is then replaced as soon as possible.

But as ever increasing numbers of emergencies take place in urban scenarios, the use of pit latrines is impossible.

In these circumstances, improvised solutions often lead to poor performance.

For urban emergencies, the authors recommend a semi-centralised system which allows wastewater to be contained and then removed from high-density communities to a more remote location that avoids human contact with pathogenic excreta.

Fenner and Guthrie say: "Disaster and emergency situations can disrupt the provision of clean water and hygienic sanitation, which are crucial for maintaining public health".

"A semi-centralised system offers considerable advantages and departs significantly from standard solutions seen in most refugee camps".

"In addition, an operation and management regime must be set up to manage the facilities effectively".

In a related WEJ paper, authors Lorna Fewtrell and David Kay examine the possible health impacts of infection from toilet flushing when using rainwater harvesting.

They felt that with increasing pressures on water supplies, it is likely that rainwater harvesting will be more widely adopted and their assessment showed that an increased risk of infection would probably be well within the acceptable range.

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