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Sanitation

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The Challenge
The need for better sanitation in the developing world is clear. Forty percent of the world’s
population2.5 billion peoplepractice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities,
and the consequences can be devastating for human health as well as the environment. Even in
urban areas, where household and communal toilets are more prevalent, 2.1 billion people use
toilets connected to septic tanks that are not safely emptied or use other systems that discharge
raw sewage into open drains or surface waters.
Poor sanitation contributes to 1.5 million child deaths from diarrhea each year. Chronic diarrhea
can also hinder child development by impeding the absorption of essential nutrients that are
critical to the development of the mind, body, and immune system. It can also impede the
absorption of life-saving vaccines.
Creating sanitation infrastructure and public services that work for everyone, including poor
people, and that keep waste out of the environment is a major challenge. The toilets, sewers, and
wastewater treatment systems used in the developed world require vast amounts of land, energy,
and waterand they are expensive to build and maintain. Existing alternatives that are less
expensive are often unappealing because of impractical designs or because they retain odors and
attract insects.
The Opportunity
Any investment in better sanitationincluding the construction of pit latrinescan help
improve public health and quality of life. Better sanitation reduces child diarrhea and improves
overall child health. For women and girls in particular, improved sanitation offers greater
dignity, privacy, and personal safety.
But solving the sanitation challenge in the developing world will require radically new
innovations that are deployable on a large scale. Innovation is especially needed in urban areas,
where billions of people are only capturing and storing their waste, with no sustainable way to
handle it once their on-site storagesuch as a septic tank or latrine pitfills up. One promising
approach is to seek solutions that have the appeal of the flush toilet connected to a sewer
network, but don’t require that infrastructure so would therefore be more affordable, better for
the environment, and less wasteful of resources.
Groundbreaking improvements in toilet design, pit emptying, and sludge treatment, as well as
new ways to reuse waste, can help governments and their partners meet the enormous challenge
of providing quality public sanitation servicesparticularly in densely populated urban
neighborhoods.

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The Challenge The need for better sanitation in the developing world is clear. Forty percent of the world’s population—2.5 billion people—practice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities, and the consequences can be devastating for human health as well as the environment. Even in urban areas, where household and communal toilets are more prevalent, 2.1 billion people use toilets connected to septic tanks that are not safely emptied or use other systems that discharge raw sewage into open drains or surface waters. Poor sanitation contributes to 1.5 million child deaths fro ...
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