Countdown to World Toilet Day

The 10th annual World Toilet Day takes place tomorrow (November 19th) and will be marked with events in more than 19 countries according to the organiser, the World Toilet Organisation (WTO) including an online flush tracker.


The purpose is to put global sanitisation centre stage and highlight that unless more is done the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015, will be missed by 30 years. And this increases to 200 years in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the WTO there are 2.6 billion people in the world without access to sanitation and a child dies every 20 seconds from diarrhoea, that’s more than die from AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Activities planned for tomorrow include ‘The Big Squat’ – a movement for the toiletless. Designed to demonstrate the problems faced by those without a toilet, the WTO is encouraging people around the world to squat for one minute in a public or visible location at 12pm.

In a slightly more irreverent take on the issue, while still encouraging people to think about the issues surrounding sanitation, you can also use an online tracker to see where it goes, when you ‘go’.

Will Parsons

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