On this day in 2009, the
residents of Adina faso walked 4 hours. A four-hour walk, simply to collect
water from this dirty, depleted stream. In
Assam, India, The only source of water for the family's drinking and cleaning
purposes is a shallow 'kutcha' well dug at their backyard. It did not have a
concrete base and there was no boundary around the well. Various types of algae
and ferns were growing inside the well, while amphibians were floating on the
water surface. The family was unaware of the ill effects of the dirty water
they were using for household consumption.
Although 70 percent of the earth covered with water, but only
about 2.5 percent of the worth to be taken by the seven billion people on
earth. The health and economic impacts of today’s global
water crisis are staggering. More than 3.4 million people die each year from
water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes. Nearly all deaths, 99 percent,
occur in the developing world. 2.5 billion people lack access to improved
sanitation; 1.1 billion still practice open defecation. Lack of
access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a
jumbo jet crashing every four hours. Women and children bear the
primary responsibility for water collection in the majority of households. This
is time not spent working at an income-generating job, caring for family
members, or attending school.
Water crisis that happened
now is threat human life than the most terrible threat whatsoever. Lack of
sanitation is the world leading cause of infections. Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death among
children under five in the world. Around 1.5 million deaths each year - nearly
one in five – are caused by diarrhea. It kills more children than malaria,
AIDS, and measles combined. 88% of global cases of diarrhea is estimated to be
attributable to unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene.
"[The water and sanitation]
crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns".
Sanitation
and proper hygiene are crucial to diarrhea prevention. It is estimated that
improved sanitation facilities can result in an average reduction in cases of
diarrhea of more than one-third. Washing hands with soap has been found to
reduce diarrhea by more than 40%, but it is something hardly to do in a region
that difficult to get water. Only 63% of the world's population has
access to improved sanitation - defined as a sanitation facility that ensures
hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.
If you don’t have a toilet, where
would you go, someone lives in region of Central India goes to an open field along
with every person defecate. Each day 1 in 3 people go without a toilet. We face
a problem when we went for open defecation. “Men would throw pebbles at my
daughter and me, when we were at our most vulnerable, and no women would
married my son because we have no toilets”, a women said. This is the fact of
life in morning routine for
every member of the families of this slum. Even a toilet is something
very valuable for them.
So,
although it sounds a bit embarrassing but it was nice to say, HAPPY TOILET DAY!
Let us throw this taboo for the lives of many people who lack the most basic
things in human life, water. This lesson is very touching our moral, in this
era of globalization that more people have a mobile phone than a toilet. Is it
fair to them?
