World Toilet Day 19 November 2017              

World Toilet Day is celebrated every year on 19 November. It is a day that seeks to engage and educate people and their communities worldwide to encourage support for sanitation-related issues and to break the stigma around sanitation. The silence around the issue of toilets and sanitation has deadly consequences. It is a day to raise awareness about all people who do not have access to a toilet despite the human right to water and sanitation. It is a day to do something about it. Clean and safe toilets are prerequisites for health, dignity, privacy and education.

The aim of this day is to draw global attention to the sanitation crisis.  In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated November 19 as World Toilet Day. It is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and partners.

The theme for 2017 is “wastewater”. By 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals aim to ensure everyone has access to a safely-managed household toilet and halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase recycling and safe reuse.

This will provide not only the profound impact on health and living conditions but safely-managed wastewater has massive potential as an affordable and sustainable source of energy, nutrients and water.

For that to be achieved, all the human waste to be contained, transported, treated and disposed of in a safe and sustainable way. Today, for billions of people around the world, sanitation systems are either non-existent or ineffective. Human waste gets out in to the environment and spreads organisms of killer diseases. Even in wealthy countries, treatment of wastewater is not perfect, leading to contamination of rivers and coastlines.

4-step journey for the human waste:

 Key facts about sanitation:

• 4.5 billion people (60% of the global population) either have no toilet at home or one that doesn’t safely manage excreta.
• 869 million people worldwide practise open defecation and have no toilet facility at all.
• 1.8 billion people use an unimproved source of drinking water with no protection against contamination from faeces.
• 80% of the wastewater generated by society, flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused globally.
• 2.9 billion people (39% of the global population) use a safely-managed sanitation service, that is, excreta safely disposed of in situ or treated off-site.
• Safe water, good hygiene with improved sanitation could prevent around 842,000 deaths each year.

Importance of Sanitation

• Sanitation is important for preventing many diseases including diarrhoea, intestinal worms, schistosomiasis and trachoma.
• Universal access to sanitation in households and schools is essential in:

o   Reducing diseases

o   Improving nutritional status of children

o   Enhancing safety, and well-being of children 

o   Increasing educational prospects, especially for women and girls

Swachh Bharat Mission-

The Government of India is aiming to eliminate open defecation by 2019 through the construction of toilets across the nation. The Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) was launched on 2 October 2014.

See detail Swachh Bharat Mission

References-

http://www.worldtoiletday.info/

http://www.worldtoiletday.info/theme/

https://swachhbharat.mygov.in/