There's a problem that affects 2.3 billion people, or 1 in 3 people worldwide and it
costs the world’s poorest countries 260 billion dollars every year.
We all laugh at toilet humour – but the state of the world’s toilets is really no joke.
For people in developed countries, flushing a toilet and turning on a tap is taken for granted. But more than 650 million people in the world do not have access to clean water, and more than 2.3 billion do
not have access to a safe, private toilet. Diarrhoea is one of the three most common killers of young children globally, along with pneumonia and malaria. Most of these deaths – 58% of them – could be prevented by clean water, sanitation and good hygiene including handwashing with soap.
See the world's % of population without access to an improved toilet (2015)
Source: WaterAid
In India, 173 people defecating in the open for every square
kilometre in the country. That ratio would be the same as 500 people having to defecate in the open in the Square Mile of the City of London, or 15,000 people in Manhattan, New York City. Open defecation leaves communities filthy and children ill and undernourished. According to World Health Organisation data, more than 140,000 children in India die from diarrhea each year before they reach the age of five.
Worst places in the world to find a toilet,
Bottom ranked: South Sudan Runners up: Niger, Togo, MadagascarSouth Sudan, where 93% of the population lacks access to an adequate toilet, has fewer safe and hygienic latrines per person than any other country in the world, according to a study highlighting the world’s failure to address the global sanitation crisis.
Source: WaterAid
Top ten places with the longest queues for toilets
India, the world’s second most populous nation, has a well-known problem with sanitation. Cities growing at an incredible pace with unofficial, unserviced slums, combined with cultural preferences for open defecation in fields rather than enclosed spaces, mean India has the
World’s Longest Queues for Toilets.
Source: WaterAid
If you stretched all 774 million people in India now waiting for household toilets, the queue would stretch from Earth to the moon – and beyond!
That queue would take 5,892 years to work through, assuming each person needs about four minutes in the toilet.
Source: WaterAid
The two countries which have made the biggest strides in sanitation are the tiny Pacific island nation of Tokelau (population 1,400), a territory of New Zealand that now enjoys more than 90% sanitation coverage, and Vietnam, which has now reached nearly 80% of people with sanitation and has become one of Southeast Asia’s fastestgrowing economies.
This map shows which countries are on track to reach everyone, everywhere with access to water and sanitation by 2030, and what increase in access is required in countries that are not on track.
