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Why promote sanitation?

Author(s): Cairncross, Sandy

Publisher: WEDC
Place of publication: Loughborough University, UK
Year: 1999

Series: WELL Fact Sheet
Collection(s): WELL

Links:

• http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/wedc/well/

Thanks largely to improved case management of diarrhoeal diseases, these cause fewer deaths than they used to. Now that ORT (oral rehydration therapy) has helped to bring the total down, it has become increasingly true that only the prevention of diarrhoea, particularly by improved sanitation and hygiene, can reduce the toll any further. The role of sanitation is obvious; the chief source of infection is other people's excreta.

Hygiene is important too; recent studies have shown that hygienic disposal of children's stools is associated with 30-40% less risk of serious diarrhoea.

Recent studies in Brazil and the Philippines have found that, once community sanitation had reduced the level of faecal contamination in the general environment, this increased the impact on child health of other measures such as improved water supply.

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