Poo. It’s not a particularly appealing topic. Certainly not something that is often discussed around the dinner table. Yet human waste and the broader issue of sanitation are crucial to effectively challenging poverty. You think I’m kidding?

Well in recognition of this very issue, the UN has declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.  The goal of profiling sanitation is to raise the connection between improving sanitation and improving development. Clean water, as we know is crucial but it is often only when clean water is linked to effective sanitation systems that we see big development strides. This is also why the Millennium Development Goal target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015, is so crucial.

The United Nations reports that roughly 2.6 billion people, or 40% of the world's population, live without access to adequate sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That’s 1.8 million preventable deaths each year. 

In Australia, a country currently experiencing unprecedented wealth, if you or your children, or other family members experience diarrhea or a case of food poisoning, as a result of poor hygiene practices, or drinking contaminated water, you can usually access some fast acting medication from your local pharmacist. At the very least, you have access to a flushing toilet with lots of toilet paper, soap and running water to wash in.

You know how to prevent a recurrence of the infection; you understand the link between washing your hands in clean water after going to the toilet, before preparing food and after playing outside or working. You know that by taking these measures you can usually avoid the experience happening again. But in our unequal world many do not have this luxury. Many are unaware of the principles of good hygiene practice or unable to carry them out as there are not the facilities to implement these simple measures. Accessing clean water may not be an option. The results are disastrous.

As a parent you may have to stand by and watch as your children suffer from repeated bouts of diarrhea, cholera, worms or other gastro-intestinal diseases. These infections stop your children from going to school; they cannot go out and play with their friends because they are too weak or sick and they may infect them also.

Sometimes the infections are so bad that hospital treatment is required – if it is available. Hence the staggering figure of almost two million deaths per year – just from poor sanitation.

As a woman you will usually bear the responsibility of caring for those that are ill taking time away from other activities. As an adult, experiencing repeated bouts of illness reduces your capacity to generate an income, or produce food for you family. You may be forced to take out loans to pay for health care, if it is available, at staggering rates of interest and so the poverty cycle continues.

Nobody would choose this life but this is the reality for many families living in countries such as Indonesia.

In 2003, approximately 37 million people or 17% of the total population of Indonesia were identified as living below the poverty line, and earning less than $1 a day. Another 120 million or 53% of the population earned less than $2 a day.  Many of these people living in poverty are landless, subsistence farmers from rural communities, who are illiterate and have had limited access to education. Many do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities or clean safe water. Water may be located in a river some distance from their homes or from a well which has become contaminated.

In such poverty stricken rural communities you often have no choice but to go to the toilet anywhere you can find somewhere private to squat or stand. Imagine if this was your community, how much excrement would there be on the ground if each person in your street or school or town defecated at least once per day, sometimes more!

There is no toilet paper so you use what you have available to you – your hand. There is often no water nearby to wash in after toileting or before preparing food so bacteria or worms, evident in excrement, can be passed onto food.

The flies come and they do not discriminate – they can move from where you have defecated to you or your neighbour’s table where food is being prepared or served. Even if you are aware of basic hygiene practices if your neighbor is not, disease can quickly spread.

The water that you are drinking is likely to come from a source where people and animals are washing and toileting, in, or nearby, resulting in contamination of the drinking water with deadly diarrhea diseases. When the rains come, sewage is washed downriver and builds up along coastal fringes fouling the environment and exposing many more people to disease.

If you do not know that this cycle is what is making you and your family sick – it is likely you do not know that this cycle of disease and illness is easily interrupted. The good news is it doesn’t cost much to fix either.

Ranmal Samarawickarama, Caritas Australia’s Indonesia Program Coordinator explains that in order to change this situation in rural communities the projects that really make a difference do not have to be technically complex or advanced.

“Sometimes you can have the same health impacts by digging a deep hole in the ground positioned far away from water sources, placing a cover over it to stop flies and building a basic structure around it. This can be as effective as spending huge amounts of money on contracting concrete tanks and sophisticated sewerage systems.”  By using simple pit toilet systems, waste decomposes safely and ceases to be a risk.

Digging a pit toilet is cheap, manageable and sustainable, and can be achieved by the community themselves, therefore not creating external dependency.

The key to success however lies in the education that accompanies the hole in the ground and the provision of water and soap to wash in.

 “The best toilet in the world is not going to have a health impact unless you understand the link between sanitation, hygiene and health” adds Ranmal.

To maintain health and prevent diseases, sanitation has to work hand in hand with good hygiene practices and access to water. If you understand the magnitude of the problem of failing to dispose of human waste properly, and the risk involved to the health of you and your community and you are made aware of the easy alternatives, real change can occur.

The United Nations estimate that for every dollar spent on improving sanitation at least three dollars, and as much as 34 dollars, are saved in costs related to health, education, and social and economic development.
 
This was the situation in the village of Pandeglang, West Java. Caritas Australia’s partner Hope for the Poor (HARFA) visited the village. HARFA  began a community project aimed at decreasing the prevalence of infectious disease among young children specifically, and within the community generally, disease caused by water contamination and poor environmental sanitation.

The change they created was immense. Click here to find out about this project and to read Masna’s story, a local woman from Pandeglang in West Java.

Over the next 12 months we all have an opportunity to energize efforts towards the MDG target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without opportunity sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. I encourage all of you to take up this challenge, as the Australian Government is doing.

Australia is on the way to helping meet this goal with the Rudd Government pledging $300 million over the next 3 years to addressing water and sanitation issues in the Asia Pacific region. For this they should be applauded. As we have learnt though, money alone won’t solve the problem. Keep an eye out for how this money is being spent and how communities are being empowered to take control of their own sanitation situations. Keep tuned to Oz Spirit for updates.

Anna Orchard
Communications Officer, Caritas Australia