Why do millions of Indians defecate in the open?

It's early morning and local commuters are queuing up for tickets at the Kirti Nagar railway station in the Indian capital, Delhi.

Along the tracks, another crowd is gathering - each person on his own, separated by a modest distance. They are among the 48% of Indians who do not have access to proper sanitation.

Coming from a slum close-by, they squat among the few trees and bushes along the railway tracks and defecate in the open.

To many, this is a daily morning ritual despite the hazards of contracting diseases such as diarrhoea and hepatitis.

It can be even more hazardous for women since each time a woman uses the outdoors to relieve herself, she faces a danger of sexual assault.

Recently two teenage girls from the state of Uttar Pradesh were gang-raped and found hanging from a tree after they left their village home to go to the toilet. Their house, like hundreds of millions of others in the country, did not have any facilities.

'No privacy'

A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says more than half a billion people in India still "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy".

Access to sanitation is a challenge that India's politicians want to tackle - both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised to put an end to open defecation in their 2014 general election manifestos.

During his campaign, Narendra Modi, BJP's newly-elected prime minister, promised: "Toilets first, temples later".

And former rural development minister Jairam Ramesh of the Congress party had stressed that "practicing good hygiene is as important as performing good puja" (act of worship in Hinduism).

    Political parties have pledged to end open defecation

India's government offers cash incentives to subsidise construction of toilets. It has also initiated hygiene and sanitation awareness campaigns, such as the "No Toilet, No Bride" slogan launched in the state of Haryana in 2005, urging brides to reject a groom if he did not have a lavatory at home.

The Gates Foundation too has offered grants to create latrines that are not connected to water, sewer or electricity and to improve the treatment of human waste.

'Lack of focus'

The exhibits at a recent "toilet fair" organised by the Foundation in Delhi included a lavatory with a photovoltaic roof-top that powers a reactor breaking down excrements into fertiliser, and another one which came equipped with an automatic sterilisation system and a generator turning the moisture into water.

Apart from poverty and lack of lavatories, one of the reasons often cited to explain open defecation in India is the ingrained cultural norm making the practice socially accepted in some parts of the society.

"Just building toilets is not going to solve the problem, because open defecation is a practice acquired from the time you learn how to walk. When you grow up in an environment where everyone does it, even if later in life you have access to proper sanitation, you will revert back to it," says Sue Coates, chief of Wash (water, sanitation and hygiene) at Unicef.

India will be free of open defecation only when "every Indian household, every village, every part of Indian society will accept the need to use toilets and commit to do so", she says.

Professor at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology Meera Mehta says the strategies implemented so far may not have the expected impact because of a "lack of focus".

"With the right policies and political attention, India can be free from open defecation within 10 years.

Source : BBC News

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To make Hand wash with soap fun loving and friendly among children. we are continuously  creating and adopting innovative WASH Exercise such as games ,drama ,live shows ,drawing & painting competition etc.
We initiated “Drawing Competition” in 10 schools near National Capital Region .Creating awareness regarding hand wash with soap and adopt good hygiene practice. To bring a good behavior change among the children, the theme of the competition is “HAND WASH IS AN ART”.
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Picture gallery:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.655876461160836.1073741854.287634107985075&type=1

World Environment Day 5th June 2014

Celebrating World Environment Day 5th June 2014

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One billion people still defecate in public despite health risks: UN

GENEVA: One billion people worldwide still practise "open defecation" and they need to be told that this leads to the spread of fatal diseases, UN experts said on Thursday at the launch of a study on drinking water and sanitation. 

"'Excreta', 'faeces', 'poo', I could even say 'shit' maybe, this is the root cause of so many diseases," said Bruce Gordon, acting coordinator for sanitation and health at the World Health Organization. 

Societies that practice open defecation - putting them at risk from cholera, diarrhoea, dysentry, hepatitis A and typhoid - tend to have large income disparities and the world's highest numbers of deaths of children under 5 years old. 

Attempts to improve sanitation among the poorest have long focused on building latrines, but the United Nations says that money literally went down the toilet. Attitudes, not infrastructure, need to change, it said. 

"In all honesty the results have been abysmal," said Rolf Luyendijk, a statistician at the UN's children's fund Unicef. 

"There are so many latrines that have been abandoned, or were not used, or got used as storage sheds. We may think it's a good idea but if people are not convinced that it's a good idea to use a latrine, they have an extra room." 

Many countries have made great progress in tackling open defecation, with Vietnam and Bangladesh - where more than one in three people relieved themselves in the open in 1990 - virtually stamping out the practice entirely by 2012. 

The global number has fallen from 1.3 billion in 1990. But one billion people - 90 per cent of them living in rural areas - "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy", the UN study said. 

The practice is still increasing in 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria was the worst offender, with 39 million open defecators in 2012 compared to 23 million in 1990. 

India no.1 

Although the prevalence of open defecation is in decline, it is often common in fast-growing populations, so the total number of people doing it is not falling so fast, or is even rising. 

The country with the largest number of public defecators is India, which has 600 million. India's relatively "hands off" approach has long been at odds with the more successful strategy of neighbouring Bangladesh, which has put a big focus on fighting water-borne diseases since the 1970s, Luyendijk said. 

"The Indian government did provide tremendous amounts, billions of dollars, for sanitation for the poorest," he said. 

"But this was disbursed from the central level to the provinces and then all the provinces had their own mechanisms of implementing. And as their own data showed, those billions of dollars did not reach the poorest," added Luyendijk. 

India's government has now woken up to the need to change attitudes, he said, with a "Take the poo to the loo" campaign that aims to make open defecation unacceptable, helped by a catchy Youtube video. here 

"What is shocking in India is this picture of someone practising open defecation and in the other hand having a mobile phone," said Maria Neira, director of Public Health at the WHO. 

Making the practice unacceptable has worked in more than 80 countries, the UN says. The goal is to eliminate the practice entirely by 2025. Poverty is no excuse, the study said, noting the role of cultural differences. 

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 14 per cent of the population are open defecators. But where the head of the household is an Animist, the figure is twice as high, at 30 per cent. Among households headed by Jehovah's Witnesses, it is only 9 per cent.

Source : The Times of India

No Toilet at home leads to gang rape & murder in U.P. village

 

Relatives of two teenaged cousins who were hanged after being allegedly gang-raped in Badaun district on Wednesday.- pHOTO: PTI

BADAUN (UTTAR PRADESH): In a crime that is rapidly gathering casteist and political overtones, two teenage girls from a backward community were raped and murdered allegedly by three brothers of the Yadav community in the village of Katra under Ushait police outpost in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh.

The girls, who were cousins, had left their house together at 9 p.m. on Tuesday and walked toward the nearby open field as there was no toilet at home. Their bodies were found hanging from a tree 250 metres away from their home at about 4 a.m. on Wednesday after neighbours and relatives began a frantic search.

“We have arrested one of the brothers, Pappu Yadav, and a hunt is on for the other two,” DIG Bareilly R.K.S. Rathore told The-Hindu . The State Government on Thursday suspended three policemen, including constable Sarvesh who has been detained for interrogation. The Katra Saadatganj police outpost in-charge, Ram Vilas and head constable, Chatrapal, are the other policemen suspended.

The IG (Special Task Force) Ashish Gupta said the autopsy on the two girls confirmed the cause of death as “ante mortem hanging”. It was also “indicative of rape”.

Although the parents informed the police immediately after the girls failed to return, the policemen asked them not to worry. The villagers immediately fanned out in all directions to trace the girls. After the bodies were found before daybreak in a mangrove, they informed the police, who however made no effort to come to the crime scene.

Only when irate villagers gathered and sought action against the killers and the police chowki staff did the policemen reach the spot. The villagers, however, did not allow the policemen to lower the bodies, but relented after local politicians BSP MLA from Jalalabad Neeraj Maurya, Bhagwan Singh Shakya of the Maurya Samaj and Brijpal Shakya of the Congress pacified them. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav justified the suspension of three police officials charged with laxity. (Additional reporting by Atiq Khan in Lucknow)

Source : The Hindu

Maternal death rates fall but chronic diseases increase pregnancy risk

6 May 2014 – Rates of maternal deaths are down, according to United Nations figuresreleased today, but pre-existing medical conditions heighten the risk of death for pregnant women and require continued investment in quality care during pregnancy and childbirth.

An estimated 289,000 women died in 2013 from complications in pregnancy and childbirth, down from 523,000 in 1990, according to the UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) Trends in maternal mortality estimates 1990 to 2013. The figure represents a decrease of 45 per cent.

Among its findings, the report shows that 11 countries that had high levels of maternal mortality in 1990 have reached the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of a 75 per cent reduction. These include Bhutan, Cambodia, Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Maldives, Nepal, Romania, Rwanda, and Timor-Leste.

“A 15-year-old girl living in sub-Saharan Africa faces about a 1 in 40 risk of dying during pregnancy and childbirth during her lifetime,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, Deputy Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“A girl of the same age living in Europe has a lifetime risk of 1 in 3,300 – underscoring how uneven progress has been around the world.”

Meanwhile, more than one in four maternal deaths are caused by pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, HIV, malaria and obesity, whose health impacts can all be aggravated by pregnancy, according to a second WHO 

study

.

According to the UN agency’s study of more than 60,000 maternal deaths in 115 countries, pre-existing medical conditions exacerbated by pregnancy caused 28 per cent of the deaths. This is similar to the proportion of deaths during pregnancy and childbirth from severe bleeding.

This second report, Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis, was published today inThe Lancet Global Health.

“Together, the two reports highlight the need to invest in proven solutions, such as quality care for all women during pregnancy and childbirth, and particular care for pregnant women with existing medical conditions,” said Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director-General for WHO’s Family, Women’s and Children’s Health.

Marleen Temmerman, Director of WHO’s Reproductive Health and Research, and co-author of the study, added that the figures show an increased burden from noncommunicable diseases on women.





Source: UN News Center 

Too many people still lack basic drinking water and sanitation

A child carrying water at the Tomping civilian protection site, 6 May 2014. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

8 May 2014 – Despite a narrowing disparity in access to cleaner water and better sanitation between rural and urban areas, sharp inequalities still persist around the world, says a new United Nations report.

According to the 2014 Joint Monitoring Report on global progress against the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on water and sanitation, more than half of the global population lives in cities, and urban areas are still better supplied with improved water and sanitation than rural ones. But this gap is decreasing.

The report, produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), notes that in 1990, more than 76 per cent of people living in urban areas had access to improved sanitation, as opposed to only 28 per cent in rural ones. By 2012, 80 per cent of urban dwellers and 47 per cent of rural ones had access to better sanitation.

In 1990, 95 per cent of people in urban areas could drink improved water, compared with 62 per cent of people in rural ones. By 2012, 96 per cent of people living in towns and 82 per cent of those in rural areas had access to improved water.

Despite this progress, sharp geographic, socio-cultural, and economic inequalities in access to improved drinking water and sanitation facilities still persist around the world.

“The vast majority of those without improved sanitation are poorer people living in rural areas. Progress on rural sanitation – where it has occurred – has primarily benefitted richer people, increasing inequalities,” said Maria Neira, WHO Director for Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

“Too many people still lack a basic level of drinking water and sanitation,” added Dr. Neira. “The challenge now is to take concrete steps to accelerate access to disadvantaged groups. An essential first step is to track better who, when and how people access improved sanitation and drinking water, so we can focus on those who don’t yet have access to these basic facilities.”

In addition to the disparities between urban and rural areas, there are often also striking differences in access within towns and cities. People living in low-income, informal or illegal settlements or on the outskirts of cities or small towns are less likely to have access to an improved water supply or better sanitation.

“When we fail to provide equal access to improved water sources and sanitation we are failing the poorest and the most vulnerable children and their families,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. “If we hope to see children healthier and better educated, there must be more equitable and fairer access to improved water and sanitation.”

Poor sanitation and contaminated water are linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid. In addition, inadequate or absent water and sanitation services in health care facilities put already vulnerable patients at additional risk of infection and disease.

Overall, since 1990, almost 2 billion people globally have gained access to improved sanitation, and 2.3 billion have gained access to drinking water from improved sources. Some 1.6 billion of these people have piped water connections in their homes or compounds.



Source: UN News Center