If you are eating while reading this and have a stomach with a delicate disposition, now is the time to push the plate away and stop munching.
Tomorrow is World Water Day and its focus is sanitation.
Yes, we are talking toilets and all things to do with disposing of human waste.
Going to the loo is something that most of us take for granted. We all do it but probably don’t give it much thought, let alone talk about it.
Not so the United Nations which came up with this annual focus on water and has also designated 2008 as the Year of Sanitation. Tearfund too is campaigning on this vital issue, working with the global church to make a positive difference.
Why? Well sanitation, or the lack of it, may have an image problem as an issue but it also has a massive bearing on human health.
Disease
Diarrhoea is a potent and all too prevalent killer in the developing world, with 1.8 million children dying as a result of diarrhoeal diseases every year.
Some 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are attributed to inadequate sanitation and unsafe water.
Cholera, typhoid and polio are also among the diseases that can be spread through human excreta.
Some 2.6 billion people, more than a third of the world’s population, don’t have access to decent sanitation.
It’s a mind-boggling statistic especially given how long the toilet has been such a ubiquitous part of western life.
And the reality behind that statistic is that each of those people has to defecate in the open or use unsafe sanitation with all the attendant risks and lack of dignity.
Concern
By any measure of progress, the fact that so many still don’t have access to sanitation should be an ongoing source of concern, if not shame, for those of us that do.
It’s true that cultural and social barriers prevent a one-size-fits-all approach to improving sanitation but lack of political will is also a major factor behind lack of progress.
Unlike climate change or trade injustice, sanitation isn’t a subject that grabs the headlines or the imaginations of politicians.
Hence the importance of World Water Day and the Year of Sanitation, says Tearfund, which is working with partners and the global church to address this issue.
One example of where money raised from supporters and the church has made a tangible difference is in Brazil.
Blessing
Our partner Diaconia has provided toilets and washing facilities to rural families in the north-east of the country, progress they describe as a real blessing.
Laura Webster, Tearfund’s senior policy officer on water and sanitation, said, `In terms of policy change, we are praying that global leaders put these vital issues on the agenda in 2008 and agree to commit to a new Global Action Plan on water and sanitation.’
• Please pray that in 2008 there is a real breakthrough in addressing sanitation as an urgent issue.
• Pray that world leaders recognise the importance of sanitation in relation to health and help break taboos which surround it.
• Pray that they commit to a new Global Action Plan and properly fund sanitation schemes within national and local government budgets.
• Pray that they promote innovative and community-led sanitation schemes that are culturally sensitive.