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India sets target of 28 toilets a minute
Sydney Morning Herald - November 22, 2008
Matt Wade, New Delhi – India has to do a big job. More than half a billion citizens don't have a toilet and the country needs to build 28 new loos every minute over the next four years to meet the Indian Government's ambitious sanitation target.
One in two Indians, or about 650 million people, now defecate in the open and the untreated waste poses a serious health risk.
Last year India added about 11 million new toilets but the government wants the rate of construction to increase.
The national co-ordinator of the aid agency WaterAid India, Richard Mahapatra, used official data to estimate 40,000 new toilets are needed each day to reach the government's goal of making a lavatory available to every citizen by 2012.
"This shows the enormity of the problem and the challenge," he said.
Despite the huge numbers, Bill Fellows, UNICEF's regional advisor on water and sanitation in South Asia, thinks it's possible.
"There has been an exponential increase [in the number of toilets built] in the past few years and if that rate of increase continues we'll meet the target," he said.
UNICEF, the UN Children's Emergency Fund, says about 1600 children die every day in India from diarrhoea. Poor sanitation is one of the leading causes of child death and illness in India.
Mr Fellows said the adoption of the UN's Millennium Development Goals had contributed to the rapid improvement in toilet construction in India and neighbouring countries. These goals established specific development targets to be achieved by 2015. However, the Indian Government says it wants an "open-defecation free" nation by 2012.
An "element of competition" between countries in South Asia is also adding to the frenzy of toilet construction, Mr Fellows said. However, Mr Mahapatra says the Government must also pay attention to the maintenance of India's rapidly expanding number of toilets.
Education is important, too – people who have never had access to a toilet have to be taught the importance of sanitation.
The Indian cricket star, Sachin Tendulkar, has been enlisted to help promote hand washing with soap, which can reduce diarrhoeal cases by almost half and acute respiratory illnesses by 30 per cent.
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