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Friday, October 21, 2011

Water Hackathon

'WaterHackathon' to Find Technology Solutions to Global Water Challenges

WASHINGTON, October 20, 2011 - Computer programmers, designers, and other information technology specialists convened by the World Bank Group and technology partners at NASA, Google, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Yahoo! will compete for 48 hours in cities around the world this weekend to develop new application software, or apps, that solve water and sanitation challenges in developing countries.

Water is essential to sustain life and economic development, yet the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation remains daunting.

- 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation

- Nearly one billion live without access to safe drinking water

Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation is the worlds single largest cause of illness, responsible for two million deaths a year thats four people every minute most of them children. More children die of diarrhea than of AIDs, malaria, and TB combined.

The first ever global WaterHackathon follows the model set by Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), a partnership among these same organizations, in which subject matter experts and local stakeholders submit problem definitions which are then tackled by volunteer software developers who use the latest technology tools to create innovative solutions. The first RHoK event in November 2009 gave rise to applications such as Im Ok! and Tweak the Tweet, which were used in emergency response operations following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The sustainable management of water resources has also acquired a new urgency in the face of a global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, increased food demands, and increased hydrological variability caused by climate change.

- Irrigation produces around half of the world's food and accounts for about three quarters of water withdrawals worldwide.

- Water scarcity will affect at least 30% of the world's population in 2050.

- Climate change exacerbates flood and drought challenges as it makes water resources harder to manage, and increases risk and uncertainty.

WaterHackathon will take place simultaneously in nine locations, including, among others, Bangalore, Lagos, Lima, Nairobi, and Washington, DC.

The general public is invited to follow the event live on Twitter at #waterhack.

Water is at the heart of some of the world's most pressing development challenges. At the intersection of technology and consumer-related data, we are seeing new opportunities to create and effectively use non-traditional solutions. Are we really taking full advantage of now-ubiquitous mobile phones, mobile internet access, and social media tools to transform inclusion, citizen participation, and transparency in water management and services? Are we using open data to full practical advantage? It is in search of such non-traditional solutions that the World Bank is launching the WaterHackathon," said Jose Luis Irigoyen, World Bank Director for Transport, Water, and Information and Communication Technologies.

"WaterHackathon represents a natural intersection of two focus areas of NASA's Open Government Initiative - open data and open source," said Nicholas Skytland, Program Manager of NASA's Open Government Initiative. "This collaborative project enables us to provide data resources to the water sector and the developer community as they create applications that address some of the world's most urgent water crises."

"HP is committed to applying our technology, expertise, and dedicated volunteers to support and contribute to the prosperity of people and communities around the world," said Marlon Evans, Office of Global Social Innovation, Hewlett-Packard Company. "We are proud to partner with the World Bank and Random Hacks of Kindness in their efforts to solve todays water problems."

"Microsoft is delighted to see the growth and continuation of the Random Hacks of Kindness model," said Patrick Svenburg, Director of Developer & Platform Evangelism at Microsoft. "The chance to bring together subject matter experts around water and sanitation with software developers from all around the world is a unique opportunity to create open solutions that will directly affect the quality of life of people, perhaps even safe lives."

"We are very excited to see the Water Hackathon taking off as one of the first Random Hacks of Kindness Community Events," said Christiaan Adams, a Developer Advocate with Google.org's Crisis Response Team.

Among the speakers at WaterHackathon is Jeff Martin, founder and CEO of Tribal Brands and Tribal Technologies, which created the first intelligent database behind mobile applications that predicts consumer behaviors and interactions. "Today, far more of the world's population has access to a cell signal than safe drinking water," he said. "What we need now is a marriage of digital convergence to solve this problem - where mobile phones and apps help bridge this incomprehensible gap in a way desktop computers never did."

Contacts:

In Washington: Karolina Ordon, +1 (202) 458-5971, kordon@worldbank.org

Christopher Walsh, (202) 473-4594, cwalsh@worldbank.org;

For Broadcast Requests: Natalia Cieslik, (202) 458-9369, ncieslik@worldbank.org

For more information, please visit: www.WaterHackathon.org

Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/worldbank

Be updated via Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/wspworldbank

For our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watersanitation



Tuesday, October 11, 2011

“King of Bollywood” Shahrukh Khan puts his star-power behind life-saving sanitation and hygiene work

First major movie star to talk about importance of toilets for dignity and health

Mumbai, 10 October 2011 – Shahrukh Khan, one of the world’s most popular and much-loved Bollywood personalities, is making the fight for the right to safe sanitation and good hygiene his own.  The announcement was made last night at the start of the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene, an international conference taking place this week in Mumbai.

“I am very happy to be an advocate for these important issues, because I believe in every human being’s right to live with dignity,” Shahrukh Khan said. “It is shameful and tragic that every 30 seconds a child dies from preventable diarrhoea -- that’s two unnecessary child deaths per minute, almost 3,000 a day or 1 million young lives wasted each year.”

Mr. Khan said he dreams of an India and a world where poor and vulnerable people don’t have to squat in the street or in the bushes to meet Nature’s call.  “It’s really quite simple. Toilets for all will make India and the world a healthier and cleaner place, particularly for poor women, girls and others at the margins of our societies,” Mr. Khan said, adding “Sanitation for all does not require huge sums of money or breakthrough scientific discoveries. Political commitment at the highest level, the need to create awareness, and meet the demand for sanitation, are all challenging issues, but doable.”

Jon Lane, executive director for the UN-hosted Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), which asked Mr. Khan to serve in the role of ambassador, says the actor’s support for the issues is greatly welcomed. “Mr. Khan is highly regarded by billions of people in South Asia and Africa, where most of the people without good sanitation and hygiene services live,” Mr. Lane said. “By extending his support to water, sanitation and hygiene issues, Mr. Khan will give a huge impetus to moving the agenda forward of ensuring there is a toilet in every home and proper hand-washing practices are followed by all in the region.”

In the coming months, Mr. Khan will advocate with the public about the impact toilets and proper handwashing on their lives by highlighting the strong linkages it has on their health and the environment around them including their ground water sources. (Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMWnoH2Mxc8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uz4THb8PFA to view his first public service announcements.)

Experts meeting in Mumbai
Some 500 activists, business leaders, health professionals, governmental officials and others from 70 countries are attending the first-ever Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene (www.wsscc-global-forum.org) in Mumbai. Arranged 9-14 October by the Geneva-based WSSCC and the Governments of India and Maharashtra, the Forum aims to highlight how to save millions of lives through handwashing, how to build educational opportunities for teenage girls through separate latrines, and how to “invest in waste” through biogas-generating toilets and other entrepreneurial innovation.

Of the 2.6 billion people living without safe and clean toilets, roughly a third live in South Asia, a third in sub-Saharan Africa and a third in China. These people are unable to fulfil their daily needs with safety, convenience and dignity. There are good reasons to turn this situation around, including evidence that points to the negative economic impacts of poor sanitation.

“Poor sanitation is costing developing countries between 3 and 7% of GDP,” said Anna Tibaijuka,  chair of WSSCC. “Improved access to toilets has the potential to reduce healthcare costs, improve productivity, increase earnings from tourism and promote greater educational attainment, especially among girls. When a school has separate toilets for girls, with doors that lock, their attendance rates improve, especially once they reach menstruation.”

About the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council's (WSSCC) mission is to ensure sustainable sanitation, better hygiene and safe drinking water for all people.  Good sanitation and hygiene lead to economic and social development, yielding health, productivity, educational and environmental benefits. WSSCC manages the Global Sanitation Fund, facilitates coordination at national, regional and global levels, supports professional development, and advocates on behalf of the 2.6 billion people without a clean, safe toilet to use.  WSSCC is hosted by UNOPS, supports coalitions in more than 30 countries, and has members around the world.
 

Monday, July 25, 2011

Rural sanitation: Bill Gates Foundation team visits Mandi



Express news service
Posted: Oct 24, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

Shimla, October 23 Mandi’s success in the community-led rural sanitation drive has started attracting international agencies, who are offering to replicate the experiment in other countries, besides Indian states. More than 150 gram panchayats in the district have already attained status of ODF (open defecation free ) - one of the basic pre-requisite of total sanitation.The district has set a target of becoming completely ODF by August 2008, perhaps the first in northern India.

Yesterday, a 10-member team from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USA, visited two gram panchayats of Mandal and Barsu in Balh Block to see how the community has collectively made a change in their living standards.The team was accompanied by officials of the World Bank, whose water and sanitation programme (WSP) is also actively associated with the drive.

Paitty Stonesifer, the foundation’s CEO, led the team and met local community leaders and members of mahila mandals to share their experiences. “What actually impressed the foundation’s CEO was the fact that the campaign is completely led by the community and involves no element of subsidy or funding,” said Subhasish Panda, Mandi’s Deputy Commissioner.

Though the foundation, which works on health issues, has earlier also visited Orissa and Maharashtra, this is the first time the CEO headed for Himachal Pradesh. Some of the local natural water sources maintained by the villagers were also visited by the team leader.

Next, a team of Pakistan’s media professionals is also reaching Shimla to collect first-hand experience on working of the rural sanitation campaign in the district. Narkanda block in Shimla with 16 panchayats has also recently become ODF. In all, 360 gram panchayats have already become ODF in the state, barring districts of Kangra, Una and Hamirpur, where the campaign has not yet taken up well.

Strikingly, Kinnaur district in the state’s tribal belt has shown change faster than even some of the bigger districts like Kangra. Now, Bilaspur, Shimla and Solan districts are also witnessing a change, says Director, Rural Development and Panchayats, Rakesh Kaushal.

“Our focus is to see a collective behaviour change in the rural community. Once that’s achieved, the people will start realising the advantages,” he feels.

In Solan, the district plan prescribes for regular monitoring of the water quality in and around the panchayats that have become ODF.

“This is a very good test to monitor community behavior and also prevent re-occurrence of diseases like diarrhoea and gastroenteritis,” said Deepak Shanan, principal secretary, IPH. Shanan says the department is already working on a plan to introduce internal water quality monitoring system for drinking water supply schemes in the state.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Sanitary napkins for rural girls from August

Aarti Dhar

Napkins will be sold at subsidised price of Rs. 6 per pack

Ensuring better menstrual health and hygiene

Safe disposal of napkins at community level

NEW DELHI: The Centre's ambitious and much-awaited scheme of making available subsidised sanitary napkins to adolescent girls in the age group of 10-19 years in rural India will be operational by August.

As part of promotion of menstrual hygiene, the napkins will be sold to girls at a cost of Rs.6 for a pack of six - Re. 1 per piece - in the village by the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA).

This scheme is aimed at ensuring that adolescent girls in rural areas have adequate knowledge and information about menstrual hygiene and the use of napkins. The girls will be provided a pack of six napkins under the National Rural Health Mission's brand ‘Freedays.'

Use to increase

In the first phase, the scheme will cover 25 per cent of the population — 1.5 crore girls in 152 districts of 20 States. It is expected that with availability of sanitary napkins at the village level, their use will increase. Easy access and convenient pricing are the strategies adopted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for increasing usage of safe and hygienic practices during menstruation.

The ASHA will get an incentive of Re. 1 on sale of each pack, besides a free pack of napkins every month.

Evidence suggests that lack of access to menstrual hygiene (which includes sanitary napkins, toilets in schools, availability of water, privacy and safe disposal) could contribute to local infections including Reproductive Tract Infections (RTI). Studies have shown that RTIs are closely inter-related with poor menstrual hygiene and pose grave threats to women's lives, livelihood, and education. Services for the prevention and treatment of RTI/Sexually Transmitted Infections are integral part of the Reproductive Child Health II Programme (RCH II).

Clouded by taboos

In India, menstruation and menstrual practices are clouded by taboos and socio-cultural restrictions for women as well as adolescent girls. Limited access to safe sanitary products and facilities is believed to be one of the reasons for constrained school attendance, high dropout rates and ill-health due to infection.

With specific reference to ensuring better menstrual health and hygiene for adolescent girls, the government is launching this scheme as part of the Adolescent Reproductive Sexual Health (ARSH) in the RCH II.

Self-help groups involved

The sanitary napkins will be manufactured and supplied by the Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL) and self-help groups. Tamil Nadu, Haryana and West Bengal will depend totally on self-help groups for the supply of the napkins.

Uniform price

The Mission Steering Group — the highest decision-making body of the NRHM — had approved the proposal for supplying the napkins at a highly subsidised cost of Re.1 a pack of five to the girls below poverty line while the rest would have to pay Rs.5 a pack. However, the price has been made uniform for all girls now.

For safe disposal of the napkins at the community level, deep-pit burial or burning are the options being considered. Due environmental clearance has to be obtained from the States for this. Installing incinerators in schools that can be manually operated is another option which is being explored.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Announcement

Water for Life Best Practices Award 2011

Winners of first award edition will be announced and celebrated at World Water Day 2011

UNITED NATIONS, Zaragoza, Spain: As part of the World Water Day celebrations, two outstanding programmes will be receiving on 22nd of March 2011 the “Water for Life” Best Practices Award in two categories:

* Category 1 - Best water management practices

·Category 2 - Best Participatory, Communication, Awareness-raising and Education Practices

The winners will be awarded their prize during the “Water for Life” Best Practices Award Ceremony in Zaragoza, Spain, with live connection to the main United Nations World Water Day event in Cape Town, South Africa.

The annual prize aims to highlight those organisations or individuals displaying outstanding merit and achieving particularly effective results in the field of water management or in raising awareness in water issues.

The first Award edition 2011 focuses on urban water, reflecting the theme of the 2011 World Water Day. The “Water for Life” Best Practices Award is organized by the United Nations Office to Support the International Decade for Action “Water for Life” 2005-2015, which implements the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC), and the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP).

Friday, February 11, 2011

In 2010, The World’s Longest Toilet Queue mobilized over 100,000 campaigners in 80 countries to make a stand for sanitation and water for all people, everywhere. Thanks if you were part of this meaningful global event. This year we invite you not to stand… but to walk: From 19-22 March 2011, the World Walks for Water, will YOU too?

Millions of people are forced to walk 6 km every day just to collect water for their basic needs. Billions have no safe place to go to the toilet. The World Walks for Water, a campaign coordinated by the End Water Poverty, Freshwater Action Network, WASH United and WSSCC, aims to raise awareness of this crisis and demands governments to prioritize water and sanitation for all. The walks on World Water Day won't fundraise, but instead apply political pressure for change as organizers are encouraged to invite local or national politicians to their events, and to lobby them while they attend.

The campaign is gaining momentum, with walks registered in 25 countries already. Ways for YOU to support The World Walks for Water are numerous:

* Organize a walk in your country and register it here. Your walk should be 6 km in length (either 6 km in total or broken into smaller walks that together make 6 km).

* If you won’t organize your own walk, check out the online map to find a walk happening near you. Get in touch with the organizer to support it and work together.

* Join the online walk (takes only a minute!) and encourage your contacts to join it as well.

* Promote the campaign to your networks and encourage them to use it as a vehicle for national advocacy on sanitation, water and health.

To organize a walk in your country, kindly see Your Guide to The World Walks for Water attached to this email. The guide contains, amongst other useful information, walk tips and a checklist for your walk. For further information and a range of online materials (toolkits, press release templates, posters and policy info sheets by country), please visit www.worldwalksforwater.org.

Any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Maja Frei, maja.frei@wsscc.org.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Why public toilets get clogged

The best-designed plans for the building and maintenance of public toilets in India seem to come undone. But the argument that the pay-per-use model popularised by Sulabh is the only workable one is superficial and unrealistic in a country where millions are denied their right to basic services like clean water and sanitation, says Kalpana Sharma

On November 19, the front page of a leading Mumbai daily ran an advertisement that announced that it was World Toilet Day. The ad was blatantly selling a toilet-cleaning agent manufactured by a leading multinational company. Interesting, nonetheless, that an organisation calling itself the ‘World Toilet Organisation’ should have decided to choose November 19, the birthday of Indira Gandhi, as a day to remember toilets.

What we should be remembering on that day is the absence of toilets in large parts of India. Our record on sanitation is still well below par for a country that believes it has already arrived on the world stage as an economic power. While some strides have been made in rural sanitation through campaigns like the Nirmal Gram Abhiyan, the urban situation remains problematic.

With liberalisation has come the belief that many social services like providing sanitation and water can be delivered through public-private partnerships, and that the onus for these services need not be borne by the government alone. The private sector has discovered that there might even be profits in this sector. And NGOs working on sanitation have realised that they can intervene in the design and delivery of sanitation services.

For Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, the inventor of the Sulabh Shauchalaya, profit was not the motive that led him to devise the simple “twin-pit pour-flush toilet” that brought about a minor revolution in the availability of toilet facilities in many parts of India. Dr Pathak began in Bihar in the early-1970s, and now heads an organisation that has spread to other countries. Indeed, ‘Sulabh’ has almost become a generic term for a particular kind of toilet.

While the Sulabh model has been greatly applauded and has generated substantial revenue for the organisation, not everyone is sold on the idea. Yet, even if there is disagreement on the details, the pay-per-use idea introduced by Dr Pathak has caught on.

Every city has tried variations on this theme. The main issue here is how a toilet block can pay for itself so that its operations and maintenance costs can be covered. On paper, this seems workable. Municipalities give the land for such public toilets, including where Sulabhs are built, free, and more often than not, even water and electricity are free or heavily subsidised. While the Sulabh model does not need to be linked to the sewerage network, as it uses septic tanks, similar toilet blocks in other cities, particularly larger ones, are connected to the main sewer lines.

So if Sulabh continues to make profits out of its toilets, how is it that other such efforts have not worked quite as well?

One reason Sulabh makes profits is because its toilet blocks are usually built in areas with a heavy footfall such as train stations or bus stations or important city junctions. The toilets are heavily used and generate considerable daily revenue. It is estimated that they can cover their construction costs in less than a year. This surplus can then cross-subsidise toilets built in slums where people cannot pay as much and the use is not so heavy.

There should have been similar success stories to report in cities where the private sector was initially invited to participate in providing public toilets. But the outcome has been mixed.

Take Bangalore for instance. The Karnataka government set up the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) in 2000 to help garner private involvement in transforming the city. Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys founder Narayan Murthy, offered Rs 8 crore from her personal funds to construct 100 public toilets in Bangalore. The toilets blocks were called Nirmala toilets and followed Sulabh’s pay-per-use model. The Corporation would provide the land free; electricity and water too would be free or subsidised. Private companies were contracted to build, run and operate the toilets and hand them over to the municipality after a fixed number of years.

The location of the toilets included public places, such as major out-station bus stops, and also slums where the charges would be Rs 20 per family per month rather than pay-per-use.

In the initial stages, 27 Nirmala toilets were built with this money at a cost of roughly Rs 10 lakh per toilet block. However, even as the toilets were being built, it was evident that operations and maintenance would be a challenge.

In the following four or five years, the Bangalore Corporation constructed another 50-60 Nirmala toilets. But according to someone involved with the initial concept, the real problem arose when the Corporation decided to drop the user charges and make the toilets free.

Within a short time, the inevitable happened. Operators running the toilets lost interest as profits fell. Little was invested in keeping the toilets clean and carrying out timely repairs. As a result, dozens of such toilet blocks are now reportedly virtually unusable.

The Corporation has tried to hand over operations and maintenance to private companies again. But in the interim there has been no real evaluation of why the effort failed and what can be learnt from it. There is no system in place, for instance, for third-party inspection of the toilet blocks. Without regular scrutiny, it is inevitable that standards will slip.

Some argue that if the Corporation had allowed private contractors to continue running the toilets by collecting user fees, the public would have been better served. The profits from such a venture are now well established, as is evident from the Sulabh experience. The revenue is virtually tax-free as it is a cash transaction. And ultimately, both the entrepreneur and user benefit. For women, in particular, who have minimal access to safe, clean toilet facilities in most cities, even paying is better than having no toilet at all.

There is, however, a class angle. Those with money have secure housing and therefore do not need to worry about public toilets. They can walk with confidence into hotels or shopping malls when they are out, and otherwise have toilets in their homes. For the poor living in informal housing without individual toilets, public toilets are a necessity. If, on top of that, they have to pay each time they use it, the burden becomes heavy.

Even if one concludes from the Bangalore experience, and similar ones in other cities, that it is best to keep public facilities on a pay-per-use basis, what do you do about slums where the only toilets available are communal ones usually built by the municipality? The ratio of people to toilets in many slums can be as high as 1:2,500 per toilet seat.

User charges in slum toilets -- Rs 20 per family per month -- are clearly not going to generate adequate revenue to cover operations and maintenance. Hence, here, either a cross-subsidy or a direct subsidy is unavoidable.

In cities like Mumbai and Pune, the municipality has roped in NGOs working with the urban poor to design, construct and maintain public toilets in slum areas. The funds for these projects are with the municipality, usually lying unused. The private part of the partnership is therefore not in funds, but in execution. Here again the story has been a mixed one.

In Pune, for instance, an enthusiastic municipal commissioner encouraged several NGOs, including Shelter Associates and SPARC (Society for Area Resource Centres) to bid for contracts to construct toilets. At first, the outcome was encouraging as these groups consulted communities where the toilets would be built, discussed the design and the location, and encouraged people from the community to be part of the construction process.

These consultations spawned several design innovations. For instance, children would continue to defecate in the open even where a toilet was available because the toilet pan was too wide for the child to straddle. As a result, mothers would let their children defecate just outside the toilet block making the approach to the toilet filthy. The groups decided to design a separate children’s toilet.

In some slums in Mumbai, where SPARC undertook the work, a community centre was built on top of the toilet block. And the caretaker and his family lived in a room above the block. This ensured that it was kept clean.

But even these enthusiastic interventions have not been trouble-free. Some of the problems had to do with the system that operates on the ground. For instance, even if a municipal corporation allows NGOs to bid for the construction of toilets, control of the money lies in the hands of petty bureaucrats. An honest and efficient man at the top does not eliminate the need to grease the palms of middlemen. So, getting funds in time to continue construction, and meeting deadlines, is the first big hurdle that many NGOs face.

The other issue is the NGOs’ approach to these contracts; they see them as not just a way of meeting a community need but also of building capacity within the community to carry out such tasks in the future. But in the process of encouraging community-based contractors, there is always the risk of inexperience leading to basic construction flaws that show up within a few years of construction.

Ultimately, it is the issue of operations and maintenance that seems to clog even the best-designed toilets. Community management of slum toilets has had its share of problems. In some cases where the group is cohesive and has been engaged in other issues such as savings, for instance, management is better. In others, where a group has been formed to manage the toilet, the results have not been entirely satisfactory. In several places, toilets have been taken over by the local thug or moneylender who charges whatever he pleases and virtually makes the toilet his adda.

The story of public and community toilets in India can be told in several theses and books. In each city, the experiences are specific to the politics and needs of that place. But there are also common experiences from which lessons can be drawn for the future.

It would be easy to conclude that just as there is no free lunch, there should be no free toilet facility. That is a superficial and unrealistic conclusion in the Indian context where millions are denied their right to basic services like clean water and sanitation. Ultimately, the only solution to the toilet crisis is the provision of secure housing in which sanitation is an integral part. But until that can be achieved (and currently it seems an almost insurmountable problem), facilities for the poor will have to be subsidised so that they may be spared the indignity that accompanies the lack of sanitation.

Infochange News & Features, November 2010

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Poor sanitation cost India $54 bn

NEW DELHI: Inadequate sanitation cost India almost $54 billion or 6.4% of the country’s GDP in 2006. Over 70% of this economic impact or about $38.5 billion was health-related with diarrhoea followed by acute lower respiratory infections accounting for 12% of the health-related impacts.

These estimates are from ‘‘ The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in India’’, a new report released on Monday by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), a global partnership administered by the World Bank .

Christopher Juan Costain, WSP regional leader for South Asia pointed out that the report helped to quantify the economic losses to India due to inadequate sanitation and also showed that children and poor households bore the brunt of poor sanitation.

More than three-fourth of the premature mortality-related economic losses are due to deaths and diseases in children younger than five. Diarrhoea among these children accounts for over 47% of the total health-related impact, that is nearly $18 billion dollars.

The report estimates that in rural areas, where 50% of households are said to have access to improved sanitation, there are almost 575 million people defecating in the open. Similarly, in urban areas where 60-70 % of the households are said to have access to sanitation, 54 million people defecate in the open and over 60% of the waste water is discharged untreated.

This has led to huge public health costs, besides causing 450,000 deaths. It has led to an estimated 575 million cases of diarrhoea, and 350,000 deaths from diarrhoea alone, in the under-five age group.
It is the poorest who bear the greatest cost due to inadequate sanitation.

The poorest fifth of the urban population bears the highest per capita economic impact of Rs 1,699, much more than the national average per capita loss due to inadequate sanitation, which is Rs 961. Among rural households too, the poorest fifth bears the highest per capita loss in the rural area at over Rs 1,000.

‘‘ And these are hugely underestimated estimates because we have excluded mortality impacts,’’ Costain says. The report admitted that many economic impacts like other diseases influenced by hygiene and sanitation and the impacts on pregnant women, low birthweight and long-term health had not been covered.

Health impacts, accounting for the bulk of the economic impacts, are followed by the economic losses due to the time spent in obtaining piped water and sanitation facilities , about $15 billion, and about $0.26 billion of potential tourism revenue lost due to India’s reputation for poor sanitation, the report says.