Lack of proper toilet facilities and sanitation kills almost two million people a year, most of them children, the World Toilet Association said at its first meeting on Thursday.
"It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing," Sim Jae-duck, the association's South Korean head, told the meeting at its recently opened lavatory-shaped headquarters south of Seoul.
Sim, a lawmaker nicknamed "Mr. Toilet", said some 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, with potentially fatal consequences.
About 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases that are mainly blamed on inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, the World Health Organisation's regional director for the Western Pacific, Shigeru Omi, told the meeting.
[Reuters, 22 Nov 2007]
I did not know there was a worldwide association about toilets. But I do know that the Philippines is one of those countries which still lack toilets.
If only more money went to better use instead of corruption, well, you know how to end that thought....
1 reactions:
i cannot imagine a world without toilets, or any form for use in sanitation. and it's true that in the Philippines, kids defecate alongside a creek or a river. in Manila Bay once, we actually saw a little kid doing her thing along the rocks, with their parents just a distance away. it is sad, really.
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