EDITORIAL: Yes we can achieve basic sanitation for all by 2030

What you need to know:

  • The objective is to encourage individuals in particular, and households generally, to use improved toilets as a matter of course. This would in the long run greatly reduce transmission of communicable diseases that still pose a major threat to society, especially to children.

Efforts to raise household sanitation standards countrywide through initiatives by both the government and related institutions are gaining momentum, with positive results recorded so far.

The objective is to encourage individuals in particular, and households generally, to use improved toilets as a matter of course. This would in the long run greatly reduce transmission of communicable diseases that still pose a major threat to society, especially to children.

Morogoro Region has declared November 30 this year the final date by which every household in the region should have an improved toilets. Chalinze District in Coast Region is a good example which shows that the stated objective is achievable.

Indeed, there are costs involved here, but they don’t equate with the costs which the country incurs in treating patients who are victims of cholera, typhoid and similar disease outbreaks resulting from poor sanitary services.

In a society that is fast embracing modernity, it is inconceivable and worrisome that a substantial percentage the Tanzanian population still practises open defecation.

The World Health Organisation estimates that some 842,000 people worldwide die annually from diarrhoeal and related diseases that are otherwise preventable through interventions such as safe human waste disposal and washing hands. About 361,000 out of the deaths are of children under five years of age.

Furthermore, half of global malnutrition, and a quarter of stunting in children, are due to waterborne diseases such as chronic diarrhoea and intestinal worms. Diarrhoea alone is responsible for 17 per cent of global disability.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have sparked renewed focus on what strategies must be adopted to achieve universal access to safe water and basic sanitation by 2030.