ACTION for World Toilet Day 2008

Written by Jonny Currie, about 1 year ago | Permalink | Campaign: Water4All

World Toilet Day 2008 - Wednesday 19th November

Next week brings the international event of World Toilet Day, especially important given that this year is also the Year of Sanitation.

Despite this global attention, water and sanitation remains a grossly neglected area: a whopping 40% of the world's population lacks access to basic sanitation.

The issue

Poor access to sanitation and clean drinking water accounts for a staggering 10% of the global disease burden and contributes to the deaths of 2.4 million children every year. Though sanitation is the single development intervention that brings the greatest public health returns, governments and the international community are failing to fulfil this basic requirement for global health.

Sanitation

How to take action

We will be presenting a petition to Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander (Secretary of Stare for International Development) on World Toilet Day demanding further action on this crisis. Here's how you can take part:

1: Scroll down the page to the online form, fill in your details and add yourself to the petition to Gordon Brown/Douglas Alexander.

2: Send your name, e-mail address, medical school, year of study and country to student@lancet.com with the line:

"I confirm that I have given permission for my name and details above to be added to the petition/letter to Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander"

3: Print off the petition above and get your friends, housemates or coursemates to sign the petition. Lecture-shout outs can work particularly well. Send all details collated to student@lancet.com

4: Use the presentation attached to this page to publicise the petition at talks, lectures or anywhere you can. Get everybody you can to sign this petition to make our voices heard!

The more signatures we get the more those in power will listen to us. Show our government how much we care about the toilets of the world!

Online petition

The letter

Dear Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander

Today is world toilet day—a day to remember that 40% of the world’s population still lack access to sanitation. To mark this special day, the undersigned medical students from the UK and around the world, urge you to continue your leadership in the international health arena by promoting water and sanitation as a fundamental health issue.

We are encouraged by the lead that you are taking in prioritising water and sanitation. We welcome the recent DFID policy report on water and sanitation, the increased financial resources you have recently committed to water and sanitation, and also your strong stance at the recent UN Summit on the MDGs. However sanitation is the most lagging MDG target and yet it remains completely marginalised in international health priorities

As doctors of the future, we are very concerned that water and sanitation has been excluded from the international health agenda. Poor access to sanitation and clean drinking water accounts for a staggering 10% of the global disease burden and contributes to the deaths of 2.4 million children every year (either directly through diarrhoeal illnesses or indirectly though pneumonia and malnutrition). The evidence highlights that sanitation is the single development intervention that brings the greatest public health returns – particularly on reducing child mortality. Unless robust action is taken, developmental progress in other areas will also be held back, particularly in gender equity and education.

Therefore, we urge you to ensure that the development priorities of health and water and sanitation are integrated development priorities and that there is at least one official in every DFID country office dedicated to monitoring this integration. We also urge you to initiate robust action on water and sanitation in the run up to next year’s G8 Summit

Finally, as the health MDGs get the most international attention, resources, and commitment, we respectively request that you champion MDG 7 (with its water and sanitation targets) to be brought in from the cold and be considered as a ‘health’ MDG. This would be a as a signal that you are serious about the health importance of water and sanitation. There is an absence of high level international champions for water and sanitation and so we very much hope that with your leadership and vision, you can persuade other global leaders and institutions to put water and sanitation in its rightful place at the top of the international priority list for improving global health.

We—the undersigned medical students from the UK and around the world—are eager to work with you in helping to make water and sanitation an international health priority.

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