Tearfund report calls for action on sanitation deaths

Christian development agency Tearfund has released a new report calling for a Global Action Plan to end what it describes as the "last taboo" of poverty - sanitation.

Diarrhoea caused by lack of proper sanitation kills one child every 15 seconds, according to Tearfund, whilst one in three people on the planet do not have adequate sanitation.

The report entitled "Sanitation Scandal" was launched in the House of Commons on Monday at the inaugural meeting of the new All Party Parliamentary Group on Sanitation & Water, also joined by scientist, historian and broadcaster Adam Hart Davis.

Monday was also designated World Toilet Day in an attempt to highlight internationally the global crisis of poor sanitation.

Two hundred and twenty MPs have already given their backing to the End Water Poverty campaign, which is seeking to address the sanitation crisis.

The Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group, Bill Cash MP said, "Half the hospital beds in the world are taken up with people suffering water-related diseases. But we almost never hear such shocking facts because the global sanitation crisis goes virtually un-remarked by world governments.

"Governments across the world must pay more attention to this crisis, particularly as ill-health due to poor sanitation is going to de-rail progress on global targets for child mortality and education."

The report reveals that babies born in sub-Saharan Africa are 500 times more likely to die from diarrhoeal disease than babies born in the western world. An estimated 443 million school days are lost each year due to disease caused by diarrhoea.

The report also claims that plans to halve the number of people in the world without access to sanitation by 2015 are off target in 74 countries and will not be achieved in sub-Saharan Africa for 60 years.

Laura Webster, policy Advisor at Tearfund said, "Diseases like cholera killed tens of thousands of British people in the mid-19th century. We discovered the link between poor sanitation and illness, putting an end to wholesale suffering and death.

"It is quite simply a scandal that we allow millions of people in the developing world to die for the same reasons."

"Now that HIV & Aids and sexual health are finally high on the global agenda, sanitation is the last taboo."

She called on politicians in all countries to address and allocate funding for sanitation promotion in order to prevent millions of preventable deaths across the developing world.

"A Global Action Plan on Water & Sanitation is long overdue and in 2008 - the UN's International Year of Sanitation - we are calling on the G8 to sign up to such a plan," she added.