Adams, J., Bartram, J., Chartier, Y. and Sims, J. (eds) (2009). Water, sanitation and hygiene standards for schools in low-cost settings. Geneva, Switzerland, World Heath Organization. ix, 41 p.
ISBN 978-92-4-154779-6
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Guidelines on water, sanitation and hygiene in schools are widely available, but additional guidance and standards for low-cost settings are needed. The development and implementation of national policies, guidelines for safe practices, training and promotion of effective messages in a context of healthy schools will decrease the toll taken by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.

These guidelines deal specifically with water, sanitation and hygiene, and are designed to be used in schools in low-cost settings in low- and medium-resource countries to:

• assess prevailing situations and plan for required improvements;
• develop and reach essential safety standards as a first goal; and
• support the development and application of national policies.

The guidelines are written for use by education managers and planners, architects, urban planners, water and sanitation technicians, teaching staff, school boards, village education committees, local authorities and similar bodies.

People held in jails and other detention centres around the world frequently have no access to clean toilets; a violation of their basic human rights, three United Nations investigators said Wednesday.

In statements marking World Toilet Day, marked on November 19 since 2001, they said states and governments had the obligation to ensure that all prisoners could enjoy safe sanitation.

“Without it, detention conditions are inhumane, and contrary to the basic human dignity that underpins all human rights,” the investigators — on torture, access to water and sanitation, and the right to the best possible health, declared jointly.

World Toilet Day is promoted by the World Toilet Organization, founded in 2001 by Singapore entrepreneur Jack Sim as a global non-profit network aiming to improve sanitation and public health policies.

“In too many places, detainees in prisons, migrant detention centres, juvenile institutions, psychiatric hospitals and other state-run institutions are forgotten,” said Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Anand Grover, rapporteur on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, said unsanitary conditions “directly cause many diseases rife in places of detention.

“Access to sanitation is fundamental for a life in dignity, which all people are entitled to,” declared Catarina de Albuquerque, U.N. independent expert on human rights and access to sanitation.

“Even those convicted of heinous crimes must enjoy such basis rights,” she added.

Read the full OHCHR World Toilet Day statement.

Source: Jon Hemming, Reuters, 19 Nov 2009 [based on the UN news press release]

Photograph by Martin Angles

In this age of spin, what politician wants to be seen to be talking shit? But if only a few more of them would do so, it could save millions of lives.

We all take a clean and safe toilet for granted but more than one in three people around the world have nowhere to go to the loo, that’s a staggering 2.5 billion people.

To mark World Toilet Day, let me ask you to imagine for just one moment the indignity of life without a loo. If you’re a woman you might only go to the toilet when it’s dark, often having to walk long distances to find an isolated spot, exposing yourself to the danger of sexual harassment, assault and animal attacks, never mind the discomfort and resulting illnesses caused by poor sanitation.

About 1.2 billion people habitually defecate in the open – in fields, in gutters and in bushes. That’s 165m litres of excreta every day – enough to fill the Houses of Parliament two and a half times over.

It was 150 years ago that the stench of raw sewage in the Thames was so vile that MPs were forced to take action on sanitation. The resulting expansion of sewerage systems in the 1890s contributed to an unprecedented reduction in child deaths. It’s hard to imagine any other single intervention in this country that has brought greater public health returns. This is perhaps why the readers of the British Medical Journal last year voted sanitation the single greatest medical advance in the last 150 years, ahead of antibiotics or anesthesia.

For World Toilet Day 2009, WaterAid is calling on Gordon Brown to make toilets a development priority. The World Bank suggests that lack of access to sanitation – alongside safe drinking water – costs developing countries up to 9% of their annual GDP; more than 400m school days are lost every year from associated illness such as diarrhoea; and, in sub-Saharan Africa, half of all hospital beds at any one time are occupied by people suffering from these diseases.

But the hardest statistic of all to stomach is the cost in children’s lives. Existing evidence suggests poor sanitation may be linked to the deaths of more than 2 million children annually causing more child deaths than HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

As history has shown, the potential of sanitation to deliver far-reaching development outcomes is huge. And the economic case is sound. Fewer people get sick, meaning they can work, earning precious money to support their families; children can go to school and hospitals are no longer overwhelmed by people suffering preventable diseases such as diarrhoea. With far-reaching consequences like these, sanitation and safe water are the fundamental building blocks of development.

Given the scale of the crisis, and the potential benefits on offer, why has there been no great stink? Why are politicians still not talking about this crisis? Perhaps one reason is that the burden of this crisis is borne so disproportionately by women and children and those in extreme poverty – the very people who have little or no voice when decisions are made.

But maybe it’s more simple than that. Can you think of a single politician who’s had their photo taken at the grand opening of a new toilet block? Health centres and schools are far easier, dare I say sexier, ideas to sell. Yet this is exactly what is needed: strong leadership, sanitation superheroes if you like, who are prepared to talk shit and address this global crisis with the political attention it deserves.

With the first ever High Level Meeting on Water and Sanitation taking place in Washington next April, the G8 meeting in Canada, and the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Review in September, there is a real opportunity over the coming months to build momentum and push sanitation up the agenda.

Based on current trends, the MDG target – to halve the proportion of people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015 – will not be met until 2108 in sub-Saharan Africa, about a hundred years too late. In the face of this terrible lack of progress, leaders must use these high-level meetings to deliver binding commitments matched with concrete action plans. Without this action on sanitation, gains in other development sectors – such as in health and education – stand to be undermined.

Of course it’s not only governments who can make a difference. The public also has a crucial role to play in ensuring that people across the globe have a safe and clean place to spend a penny.

Join us in our plea to Brown to become a sanitation champion by adding your voice to our petition.

Source – The Guardian, Nov. 19, 2009

GENEVA, November 19 (UNHCR) – Dominique Porteaud is UNHCR’s senior water and sanitation officer. The French national, who has forestry and public health engineering degrees, visits refugees camps and settlements for the internally displaced around the world to plan and build water and sanitation systems, including latrines. To mark today’s World Toilet Day, he sat down with UNHCR Web Editors Leo Dobbs and Haude Morel and discussed his work. Excerpts from the interview:

Your role begins during an emergency. Tell us more

In an emergency situation, we need to quickly set up a system of latrines to avoid people defecating in the open and the spread of communicable diseases. These are temporary, communal latrines that are put in place from almost day one and maintained for the first three to six months. They are usually constructed from plastic sheeting and local materials on a plastic slab, or maybe a piece of wood that is cut. You dig a pit and put the wood on top. This helps ensure that human waste is not spread by people walking and that water sources are not contaminated.

What happens after the emergency period?

We build something more solid. One of the problems with emergency latrines is that they need to be maintained. For example, a block of five latrines may be used by some 500 people every day, but because they are communal nobody maintains them. Therefore you need to employ people to do that, which is not a great job and not really sustainable in the long term.

The next step is to move away from these communal latrines to household latrines . . . where each household or two households will have a common latrine . . . The ownership is with the people and they should clean their own latrines. But this does not always happen and that’s why we do a lot of hygiene promotion activities, monitoring the state of the latrines, making sure they are clean, that there is a door to ensure privacy for women.

Who builds these latrines?

At the start, it will be UNHCR with the implementing partner. We pay people a salary, an incentive, to dig the pit and build the infrastructure. Because it’s an emergency, everybody’s in a rush to set up a system. With the household latrines, families dig their own pit and build their own infrastructure, with bushes, with trees, with mud, under the technical supervision of the implementing partner . . . at this stage it will be the refugees themselves doing it.

What happens if you don’t build them?

A good example is Goma in 1994, when a million people crossed the border and, I think, about 50,000 people died because there was no proper sanitation and water supply. One of the major problems in Goma was that it was impossible to dig latrines because the [volcanic rock] ground was so hard and all the waste was spread around and contaminated the water that people were drinking. As a result, there was cholera everywhere.

You are part of UNHCR’s health Unit. Why is that?

The reason why water and sanitation is under public health is because there is a strong link between public health and water and sanitation. For me, water and sanitation is the prevention, we prevent people from getting diaorrhea and other diseases. The public health people are more curative.

Tell us about the water distribution systems that are so important for sanitation in camps?

They need to be improved. During an emergency, [donor] money is usually flowing in and you can build a lot of pipelines, boreholes, and so on. When the emergency is over after a year, two years, three years, money is not coming in as it was before. Therefore the systems are getting old, people don’t have any money to change the pipes or to do proper maintenance. A good example is Kenya, where the water supply system serves something like 250,000 people in three camps at Dadaab. But the bore has not been properly maintained, while the system is old and has not been maintained either. So we can’t supply enough water to the population . . . I have been to Djibouti and I’m going next week to Ethiopia and I think it is a similar trend.

Are there innovations in latrine design and technology?

Yes, of course. If you look at the situation 15 years ago, you were just digging a pit and that was it. Now, a lot of people are talking about biogas [produced by the biological breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen]. Every time someone defecates, you have a gas – methane. We use this gas to create energy and more and more people are looking at the possibility of reusing this gas as an alternative, environmentally friendly fuel. Or there is another thing called ecosan, which is ecological sanitation.

And then there are different designs in different places, whatever suits people best. If you travel around, you will see square latrines in some places, ring latrines in others, or some made with used clothes, plastic sheeting, bamboo or stone. You can find different designs and infrastructure and that’s what makes it fun, because you need to use your imagination to make sure you have the structure best suited to the culture of the people

How many latrines does UNHCR or its implementing partners build?

It’s difficult to say. On the basis of one latrine for every 50 people, there are an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 latrines in camps across the world currently. Maybe we fill in and replace 10-15 percent on an annual basis, which means we are building 10,000-15,000 latrines every year.

What about cultural considerations?

I will give you an example of something that happened in Indonesia after the [2004 Indian Ocean] tsunami. Green is the Muslim colour, something that you need to respect. One group built latrines and put green on the floor – that showed disrespect to the Muslims. The position of the latrine is important too; you should not have your back facing towards Mecca. Respect for women is another consideration. Usually, we separate latrines between men and women.

Source – Reuters AlertNet, Nov. 19, 2009

SINGAPORE, Nov 17 (Bernama) – The world’s poor and rural communities will soon have access not only to proper sanitation but also use of human waste fertiliser when a Singapore-based company makes available its locally-designed affordable toilets.

The company, Rigel Technology, has designed a prototype of the toilet, a modular squat toilet consisting of three-in-one pan with a raised platform with a step, a compost chamber and urine collector.

The prototype which is in the final stage of development will be exhibited at the World Toilet Summit and Expo (WTSE) 2009 here early next month, according to the company’s managing director, Christopher Ng today.

Speaking at a media conference here, Ng said the company decided to join hands with the World Toilet Organization (WTO) to produce affordable toilets for rural communities that had no access to sanitation as its corporate social responsibility in serving mankind.

He said the maintenance-free, light (25 kg) and low-cost toilet, made of recycled materials, could be easily deployed without the need to be connected to a conventional sewerage system.

The solid waste is composted for re-use as fertiliser, while the liquid waste is piped out separately via a built-in urine diverter and urea is extracted from it.

Ng said the toilets, to be priced between US$30 and US$100, cheaper than building one that usually costs US$300, would be mass-produced in its factories in Sichuan, China, initially 10,000 units monthly, and marketed from early next year.

Meanwhile, the locally-based WTO founder, Jack Sim said about 2.5 billion people in the world had no access to proper toilet, an emerging market estimated to be worth more than US$1 trillion.

He said the toilets could also be easily deployed and practical for use in disaster areas affected by flood or earthquake, or areas where there were refugees, another new market for the toilets.

The WTSE, ninth in the series and to be held on Dec 2 to 4, is jointly-organised by WTO and MP Asia, in partnership with Asian Development Bank and Singapore’s Restroom Association.

Source – http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsbusiness.php?id=455939

Jack Sim, founder, World Toilet Organization (the other WTO, as he puts it) was in Chennai [India] for an awareness drive ahead of World Toilet Day on November 19. “WTO is an advocacy group. We don’t actually build toilets; we partner with organisations across the world and share knowledge and experience,” says Sim.

He says many people have TVs and mobile phones but no toilets. “It’s about prioritising sanitation; 40% of the world has no access to proper toilets. Sanitation is about making people aware of the relationship between hygiene and health,” he says.

WTO which has over 200 partners worldwide, 42 of which are in India is one of the few organisations that focusses only on sanitation and toilets instead of water. “Everyone clubs water and sanitation, and 95% of the funds go towards water projects. But good sanitation is the first step towards clean water,” he says.

Sim started “the other WTO” in 2001 to disseminate serious facts with a sense of humour. The logo is a toilet seat shaped like a heart. “I thought the best way to break the toilet taboo was to use lots of puns.” But the name, which everyone thinks is “really bad at first” sticks in people’s minds. “That’s because every mother has told her child not to talk about the toilet. It’s not polite’. And here we are talking about the loo quite freely,” says Sim, who is often called Toilet Man.

And it’s not just about getting toilets installed. “You have to keep them clean too. So Sim has started the World Toilet College in Singapore that provides training in toilet maintenance and design. “I’m hoping we can open one in India too to train toilet cleaners like technicians.”

He believes people need to be given incentives to keep toilets clean. “For instance, for a city or a mall, tell them how many tourists or customers they’re losing because they have bad toilets. In a rural area or slum, get the community involved by making them paint the toilet, bright and colourful, so that they feel proud of it and keep it clean,” he says. “You need to create an emotional connect with the toilet. If you keep scolding people, it’s not going to work.”

This year, for World Toilet Day, WTO is planning a Big Squat. “We’re getting people all over the world to squat together in public places and take a picture. It’s a fun way to get the message across and make people laugh,” he says. World Toilet Day, according to him, provides the legitimacy for people to talk about toilets openly. “Toilets are like sex, everyone wants to discuss it, but is waiting for someone else to break the taboo.”

Source: Shalini Umachandran, Times of India, 11 Nov 2009

CALGARY, Nov. 16 /CNW/ – Why in the world is an organization dedicated to the treatment and prevention of blindness spending money on toilets?

“Because believe it or not, toilets and blindness are directly connected,” says Pat Ferguson, President & CEO of Operation Eyesight. “Proper sanitation and clean water are in short supply in the developing world and that contributes to a high rate of unnecessary blindness and other serious health problems.”

A new study conducted by Zambia’s Ministry of Health and supported by Operation Eyesight found that trachoma was 28 per cent more likely to strike in households that do not have proper toilet facilities. The study, which covered five districts in Zambia, found that up to 80 per cent of the households surveyed do not have toilets.

“Trachoma is caused by a bacterium and is easily spread from person to person and by flies which breed on human waste,” says Ferguson. “So it’s no surprise that proper sewage disposal helps to prevent this horrible disease.”

Trachoma is the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. In parts of Zambia and Kenya where Operation Eyesight supports development projects designed to eliminate trachoma, up to 30 per cent of children age one to nine years are infected.

Without treatment, trachoma causes a person’s eyelids to turn inward so that the eyelashes constantly scrape the eyeball. It is extremely painful and can lead to permanent blindness. The World Health Organization estimates more than 80 million people are affected by trachoma and about 8 million suffer the advanced stages of the disease and are visually impaired.

Operation Eyesight’s trachoma projects are designed to both treat and permanently eliminate trachoma. The projects follow the World Health Organization-endorsed SAFE strategy which includes Surgery to treat the late stage of the disease, Antibiotics to eliminate infection, Face washing and hygiene promotion, and Environmental change including water wells and latrines to prevent re-infection.

To be effective, the ambitious projects require construction of thousands of latrines, drilling hundreds of wells, mass distribution of antibiotics and training thousands of citizens in hygiene and well management.

“These projects are large and costly,” says Ferguson, “But the benefits are enormous. In addition to preventing unnecessary blindness, the SAFE strategy dramatically reduces other serious diseases, helps keep children in school and saves women the need to walk many kilometers in search of water, which is usually unfit for human consumption.”

Operation Eyesight is working in close partnership with the governments of Kenya and Zambia and is a member of GET2020, the World Health Organization initiative to eradicate trachoma from the entire world by 2020. For more information about Operation Eyesight’s trachoma projects, visit www.operationeyesight.com.

Operation Eyesight is a Canadian international development organization dedicated to preventing and treating blindness throughout the world for more than 45 years – primarily in South Asia and Africa. We help local medical professionals provide comprehensive, sustainable eye care and community development for the people of the world who can least afford it. Since 1963, Operation Eyesight has restored sight to more than two million people and provided blindness prevention services to nearly 33 million others. For more information, visit www.operationeyesight.com.

Global Blindness – Every five seconds, one person in our world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute. More than 90 per cent of the world’s blind people live in developing countries, where day-to-day life is already challenging and blindness is a direct threat to life. About 80 per cent of this blindness is preventable or treatable.

Source – NewsWire

Bog bards flushed about new book

A Shetland project which aims to put new writing in public toilets attracted poets from all over the world.

Now a book of the best 24 Bards in the Bog poems is to be launched on World Toilet Day.

The final selection of work was made by 2009 TS Eliot prize winner Jen Hadfield.

All profits from the book will be donated to the World Toilet Organisation which is committed to improving global sanitation.

The competition was launched in February by the Shetland Islands Council Library Service.

Entries were received from countries such as Poland, France, Canada and the US, as well as many from throughout the UK.

The library service wanted to give budding writers the chance to get their work read and also bring poetry to a wider audience.

Better sanitation

They had almost a captive audience, as the poems were displayed on the inside of toilet cubicles in public buildings all across the isles.

Local councillor Gussie Angus said: “This low-cost project has had far-reaching effects, with many people reading poetry for the first time in many years.”

The new publication will be launched at the Shetland Library on Thursday 19 November to coincide with World Toilet Day.

According to the World Toilet Organisation over 2.5bn people are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity and kills more than 1.8m people a year.

On Friday 20 November a special gala evening of poetry will be held in the Shetland Library.

All 24 poems will be read aloud by some of the local writers who feature in the book.

There will also be toilet-themed music and a chance to buy the new publication, which costs £5.

Story from BBC NEWS – 2009/11/14

The Ecological Sanitation Research group (EcoSanRes) at Stockholm Environment Institute has launched its first Knowledge Node on Sustainable Sanitation for southern Africa during the second Africa Water Week. It is one of the ten planned regional nodes, the next one will be launched next week in Uganda.

“Our aim is to train groups in sustainable sanitation and develop local capacity to respond to demand for information and training in the region, says Madeleine Fogde, EcoSanRes Capacity Development Manager.” Other knowledge nodes will be established in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Water Research Commission (WRC)  is managing the the secretariat of the Southern African knowledge node. The Water Information Network South Africa (WIN-SA)  is implementing it.

The Southern African Node will create a knowledge management hub for sustainable sanitation. The hub will facilitate and coordinate capacity and skills development, knowledge sharing and collaboration. It will furthermore assist individuals and organisations from different disciplines within the SADC to:

o    Participate in sustainable sanitation activities and innovations;

o    Document and share experiences on sustainable sanitation as generated by different stakeholders and;

o    Develop and maintain a sanitation portal that facilitates e-collaboration amongst stakeholders in the region.

In Johannesburg the three partners launched a new quarterly magazine for Southern Africa “Sanitation Matters”. The first issue Nov 2009 – Jan 2010 is very colourful. It carries an interesting story of Sanitation Learning Journey from a Namibian delegation to South Africa. They looked at various urine diversion toilets and other ecological sanitation technologies in various provinces in South Africa. The information will help feed Namibia’s the sanitation strategy and its implementation, as called for by a cabinet decision to improve sanitation.

In another article on South Africa’s Free Basic Sanitation Implementation Strategy the author says that the sanitation targets will not be met in 2010 as earlier planned.  The new target is 2014. 

For more information, contact Ditshego Kgopotso Magoro, Node Manager,  email

Africa is off-track to meet the Millenium Development Goals on Sanitation. Especially special public sector budget lines for sanitation to the tune of 0.5 percent of GDP are not forthcoming. Monitoring and evaluation systems for sanitation have also not been set up yet. This is the outcome of a review of progress in 44 African countries on implementation of the eThekwini Commitments of Sanitation endorsed by African Heads of State at the AU Summit in 2008 in the Sharm, El Sheikh Declaration.

The World Bank, Water and Sanitation Program and WaterAid reviewed progress on the 10 eThekwini commitments assessed against a harmonized scoring system. They shared their draft results during the second Africa Water Week in Johannesburg from 9 to 13 November. They reported trends that indicate real progress in ensuring that five commitments are being met in most countries:

1. There is a national sanitation policy.

2. There is one national plan to meet the MDG sanitation target.

3. Adequate profile is give to sanitation in the poverty reduction strategy plan.

4. There is a principle institution accountable.

5. There is one coordinating body for sanitation.

These findings are now being validated by the countries and the AMCOW Executive Committee. The end result will be published to serve as a platform for dialogue and consultation at regional, national and local levels to development and implement AficaSan country action plans to scale up and sustain sanitation and hygiene behavioural change service delivery.