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Home  Articles Health Impacts Sanitation and Ventilation System in Hometown Articles
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Diarrhoeal disease is a leading cause of death and illness, killing 1.8 million people each year. Poor hygiene and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to 88 per cent of all deaths from diarrhoeal disease, with children paying the highest price: 5,000 deaths a day. Hundreds of millions of other children suffer reduced physical growth and impaired cognitive functions due to intestinal worms.
Improved access to sanitation would also lead to very high avoided health sector costs, according to UN research. On a typical day in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, half the hospital beds are occupied by people afflicted with faecal-borne disease. Treating preventable infectious diarrhoea consumes 12 percent of the region's total health budget.
Globally, $552 million in direct treatment costs would be avoided by meeting the MDG sanitation target.
Around the world, an estimated 200 million tons of human waste and untold millions of tons of wastewater are discharged uncontained and untreated, into watercourses every year. As a result, humans are regularly exposed to bacteria, viruses and parasites - spread through direct or indirect contact with these watercourses. Such exposure is the leading cause for diarrhoeal disease (including dysentery and cholera), parasitic infections, worm infestations and trachoma.
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Home Sanitation and Ventilation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic wastewater (sewage, sullage, greywater), industrial wastes, and agricultural wastes. Hygienic means of prevention can be by using engineering solutions (e.g. sewerage and wastewater treatment), simple technologies (e.g. latrines, septic tanks), or even by personal hygiene practices (e.g. simple handwashing with soap).
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Sanitation in the hometown
If you've worked in a nuclear radiation area, you understand about step-off pads. You understand how to contain contaminants. The concept is very simple: don't put something clean onto something dirty. In the home, that concept often goes unheeded. Consequently, people make themselves sick by turning their homes into "centres of sickness."
You can turn your home into a centre of wellness, if you know what to do. Follow these tips, and you'll be well on your way:
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An International Sanitation Trend
Many countries are planning to implement ecological sanitation projects on a national scale. For example, in the last five years, the number of countries working on ecosan projects with the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, a German development organization, has nearly tripled, from 15 in 2002 to 44 in 2007. In China, one project involving GTZ and others started with 70 ecosan users and has since grown to more than 1 million participants. India, where almost half of the country's 1.1 billion residents lack sanitation, is a focus for ecosan practitioners, according to Sören Rüd, junior expert on ecosan at GTZ.
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Good Brewing Sanitation
Sanitation is critical to brewing good beer at home. Even the slightest contamination of fermenting or finished beer can ruin a perfectly good batch. This week, we take a look at good sanitation techniques for home brewers.
Anything that comes in contact with your wort or beer after it has been boiled should be both washed and sanitized. Items used prior to boiling should be washed, but need not be sanitized as boiling the wort will sanitize it.
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Unsafe Water and Poor Sanitation Causes 4000 Children to Die Each Day
More people are affected by the negative impact of poor water supply and sanitation than by war, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction combined, states a paper published in this week's issue of The Lancet.
The article is the fifth in a series of papers summarising the key conclusions of the Millennium Project-a three-year independent advisory effort commissioned by UN Secretary-General KofiAnnan to review progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The MDG's commit the international community to address extreme poverty, with quantitative targets set for the year 2015.
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