Take a look at this video first. Then, we will talk!
In India...
- Close to 640 million people do not have access to toilets followed by Indonesia (58 million), China (50 million), Ethiopia (49 million), Pakistan (48 million) and Nigeria (33 million)
- 18 percent of urban India still defecates in open while the percentage of rural India is as high as 69 percent.
- At least 44 percent of the population defecates in the open only in South Asia.
- Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five each year.
- This also underlines that open defecation leads to deadly diarrhoea and other intestinal diseases which kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year.
- Without access to latrines, many women and girls relieve themselves only under the cover of darkness. Night-time trips to fields or roadsides put them at risk of physical attack and sexual violence.
