International Year of Sanitation 2008
To put the spotlight on this issue the UN General Assembly declared the year 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. The goal is to raise awareness and to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.
Proper sanitation: It’s a seemingly mundane thing that most people in the developed world take for granted. But at least 2.6 billion people – some 41 percent of the global population - do not have access to latrines or any sort of basic sanitation facilities. As a result millions suffer from a wide range of preventable illnesses, such as diarrhoea, which claim thousands of lives each day, primarily young children. Improving access to sanitation is a good investment because:
- Sanitation is vital for human health
- Sanitation generates economic benefits
- Sanitation contributes to dignity and social development
- Sanitation helps the environment
- Improving sanitation is achievable!
