What are the Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation?

While much progress has been made across the world when it comes to hygienic sanitation, and 2.1 billion people across the world gained access to improved sanitation between 1990 and 2015, there is still a lot to do.

There are still millions if not billions of individuals across the globe, especially in poor and developing countries, dying from water-related diseases due to a lack of fresh water and hygienic sanitation, and more than half of them are children under the age of ten.

There are still too many regions where the population is still defecating in the open, sometimes in those very rivers from which they source their drinking water. Educating these individuals in simple hygienic practices such as washing their hands after going to the toilet and before they handle food is vital.

The World Bank estimates the annual economic loss due to poor sanitation to be 260 billion USD per year. Water and sanitation are at the very core of sustainable development, critical to the survival of people and the planet, but sanitation services are significantly undermined by a huge human resources capacity gap and a shortage of professionals are hampering the ability to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Wastewater treatment efforts increased the number of treatment facilities in cities in China from 480 to 3720 between 2000 and 2014, resulting in an additional 36 million citizens per year receiving wastewater treatment. Bold policies and investments elsewhere have also made a massive difference, such as in England and Wales, where the impact of the EC Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive realised around £9.2 billion being invested in sewerage services between 1990 and 2000.

Progress has also seen: 4.9 billion people globally used an improved sanitation facility in 2015, but 2.4 billion still did not. There are still 946 million people without any facilities at all, who continue to practise open defecation, and this is just not good enough!

Access to clean drinking water and hygienic sanitation is a Human Right; let us ensure that ALL humans have both!

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