8 out of 10 users of unimproved toilets live in rural areas.
Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.8billion preventable deaths every year.
People in rural areas are 6 times more likely to use a bush or a forest as a toilet than in urban areas.
443million school days are lost each year due to sickness from diarrhoeal diseases.
It is estimated that half the girls who stop attending primary school in Africa do so because of the lack of toilets.
Improved sanitation enhances dignity, privacy and safety, especially for women and girls. It improves convenience and social status. Sanitation in schools enables children, especially girls reaching puberty, to remain in the educational system.
Sanitation works economically – for every $1 spent on improving sanitation there is an average economic benefit of $7.
Globally the cost of not meeting this MDG target costs $35billion (US) each year.
18% of the global population practises open defecation
In a single day the waste produced by the 1.2billion people who do not use a proper toilet would fill the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
5.7 billion people now use drinking water from an improved source, an increase of 1.6 billion since 1990.
Most countries are on track to meet the drinking water target, except sub-Saharan Africa.
Almost 70% of urban dwellers in the Dominican Republic use bottled water as their main source of drinking water.
Women shoulder the largest burden in water collection; over 70% of the world’s water collectors are female.
94% of Bangladeshi water collectors are female, 77% of Trinidad and Tobago’s collectors are male.