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I just read a newspaper article that rated Melbourne's best and worst public toilets. Four Melbournians had gotten together to give toilets around the city a rating between 1 and 10 based on cleanliness, toilet paper stock, ambience, soap and hand drier facilities, so that we could ‘get down to business in relative style’.
It reminded me of a puzzling fact I saw in United Nations report - that in the world today, there are more mobile phones than toilets.
How can 179 million people in India have the ability to call someone on the other side of the world, but not have a place where they can urinate or defecate (hand driers and ambience aside)?
Turns out, it’s largely a question of money. Mobile phones are pretty cheap - in India you can buy one for as little as $25. According to the UN, toilets cost around $300 – once you factor in the labour, materials and personnel needed to build it.
But phones also rely on infrastructure – by 2001 a staggering US$22 billion had been invested in telecoms in India. This investment has been crucial for developing communities – the presence of a mobile phone in a remote community can provide life saving access to emergency medical advice, and provide farmers with a connection to markets.
So, why is it that the mobile sector has received such huge private investment, while toilets are left languishing?
In short – toilets aren’t sexy. No matter how much you liked the film Kenny, toilets aren’t the sort of thing that things that get politicians, celebrities and fundraisers excited.
But when you start to consider the flow on effects (no pun intended), it’s hard to understand why we aren’t investing more in sanitation. There’s certainly a market for it – according to the latest MDG report, almost one if four people in the poorest countries live without any form of sanitation, and a further one in six use facilities that don’t hygienically separate the waste produced from later human contact.
These are astounding statistics when you consider that missing toilets kill millions every year. The absence of effective sanitation increases the risk of diarrhoea, cholera, hepatitis and related diseases.
And, taking it away from the stats – it’s just repulsive. Imagine having to run behind a bush every time you needed the loo, the feeling of wandering through town and realising you’ve just stepped in human feces, or, like the kid in Slumdog Millionaire, falling through a latrine.
In an innovative response that connects texts and toilets, our friends at Water Aid are collecting old mobile phones to raise money for water and sanitation projects. For each complete mobile you give, WaterAID get $5 that can be invested in supporting communities around the world to get toilets.
Find out how you can participate in the UK or Australia today. To learn more about global health, click here.
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