World Toilet Day 2020: Sanitation for All
Every year, we celebrate World Toilet Day on 19 November to raise awareness of the 4.2 billion people who live without access to adequate sanitation. World Toilet Day is about taking steps to resolve the global sanitation problem and reach Target 6 for Sustainable Development: water and sanitation for everyone by 2030.
The emphasis this year is on safe sanitation and climate change. Climate change is declining. And sanitation facilities, from sanitation and septic tanks to treatment plants, are affected by flooding, pollution, and rising sea levels. So everyone must stay hygienic to protect and preserve our health security and avoid the spread of deadly infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and even COVID-19.
More so, we should start considering using waste to improve Agriculture and recover greener electricity emissions efficiently. This is because we can use sewage and sludge as nutrients for clean energy.
Sustainable Sanitation
But what exactly is a sustainable method of sanitation? Sustainable sanitation starts with a toilet that effectively collects human waste in a clean, usable, and dignified environment. The waste is then collected in a tank drained later by a recycling service or pipework shipped away.
Access to enhanced sanitation services is vital to every society’s socio-economic well-being and sustainable development. The cross-sectional results from the 2013 Nigeria Population and Health Survey used inferential data to interpret the country’s sanitation situation. And they found that 44.2% of households used different pit latrines, followed by septic tank flushing toilets (10.3%).
Although only 5.3% of respondents used bathrooms attached to sewage networks, almost a third (31.5%) lacked sanitation facilities. The remaining 8.7% used other forms of sanitation facilities.
Inadequate sanitation has a detrimental effect on human and environmental health, including susceptibility to acute excreta-related diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis A, and pollution of drinking water supplies, environmental deterioration, and leads to infant malnutrition and low school attendance. It is estimated that inadequate sanitation causes 280,000 diarrheal deaths annually worldwide. About 2800 people die every day from illnesses in Africa due to insufficient sanitation, bad hygiene, and contaminated water.
Children under the age of 5 in Nigeria have a 38% greater chance of dying due to a shortage of improved sanitation and water supplies. The importance of sanitation in enhancing citizens’ well-being and fostering sustainable development is also expressed in the official acceptance of access to adequate sanitation as a human right by the United Nations in 2012 and the implementation in 2015 of the Sustainable Development Agenda (SDA).
However, without a much sharper emphasis on inequalities in access to sanitation between regions and communities, such as urban and rural groups, rich and poor, men and women, or marginalized groups such as minority ethnic groups and less educated people as opposed to the general population, achieving this admirable goal is not possible. Targeted measures to accomplish the aim are achievable by recognizing inequalities where they exist and understanding their determining factors.
Now, how do we resolve these challenges?
To resolve sanitation challenges, significant stakeholders in the country’s sanitation sector must move to action. Task Forces on Sanitation, National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, local water and sanitation departments, donor agencies, and NGOs need to work in tandem with households lacking adequate sanitation.
This collaboration is essential because, except for the integrated sewage system, which is the state and individuals’ responsibility, better sanitation services are primarily responsible for individual households.
Policymakers in many developed nations are neglecting the sanitation system. Human waste and its removal, unlike water availability, are deemed catastrophic problems because the money needed to solve the ongoing sanitation problem is not made available.
Experts have examined several socio-economic and location-based determinants of various access levels. And they have suggested holistic policies, considering geographic differences.
Therefore, we must collectively give hygiene education and improve our behavior towards a more sustainable sanitation delivery in Nigeria. And that’s because the secret to improving human health and environmental quality is to pay sufficient attention to the sanitation sector. And it should be for all.
