Picture: Jay Butcher/Tearfund
(Click here for our press release.)
To mark the day, Tearfund carried out a survey to reveal some interesting features of Britain’s toilet habits.
Through our online survey we found that 60 per cent of the adult British population occupy themselves with activities like reading, chatting, texting or meditating while on the loo. Reading comes top of the list, with 39 per cent of people claiming to read newspapers, magazines and books.
We also found that 75 per cent of the British population encountered at least one problem whilst going to the toilet in the past month, with problems ranging from having no loo roll to a broken flush.
But the situation is much worse for 2.5 billion of the world’s poorest people who don’t have access to a toilet at all. Not having decent sanitation deprives people of human dignity, it also means that they are exposed to all kinds of disease.
Tackling sanitation along with providing clean water and good hygiene practices would reduce the 1.5 million child deaths from diarrhoea each year by 65 per cent.