At current rates sub-Saharan Africa will finally meet the MDG target in the early 22nd century (2100s) halving the proportion of people without access to sanitation.
Sanitation is the hygienic means of keeping people out the way of harmful wastes in order to promote health. It means ensuring that people have:
• a suitable toilet to use – not just an open space or a bucket
• the opportunity to prepare food safely and hygienically
• the chance to wash their hands reducing the risk of spreading germs.
Without improved sanitation, people suffer from ill health, lost income, inconvenience and indignity, and millions of schooldays are lost each year. Yet billions of people around the world lack even the most basic sanitation.
The global sanitation situation is presented as a four-step ladder that includes the proportion of the population:
• Practising open defecation
• Using an unimproved sanitation facility
• Using a shared sanitation facility
• Using an improved sanitation facility
When people use fields, forests, bushes, rivers, lakes, seas or any other open spaces as toilets, or dispose of poo with the rubbish, it is known as open defecation.
An improved sanitation facility is one that separates human waste from human contact. Improved facilities include flush or pour-flush systems which use sewers, septic tanks or pits to deal with the waste, ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines, pit latrines with a slab or platform which can be easily cleaned or composting toilets.
Shared facilities are acceptable facilities that two or more households share, public toilets are also included.
Unimproved facilities don’t separate waste matter from human contact and include flush or pour-flush to other locations like the street, yard, open sewer, ditch, drainage way or other location. Bucket, hanging and pit latrines that don’t have a slab or platform to stand on are also unimproved facilities.
Tearfund recognises the importance of improved access to sanitation and the benefits to health and well-being. For many years Tearfund has been working with projects concentrating on rural water provision, hygiene practices and assisting women in particular. Our partners’ work has benefitted almost 4 million people between 2000 and 2006.