More people ‘have phones than toilets’
PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | FILE Mobile phones on display in Nairobi. According to a United Nations study, more people around the world have access to mobile phones than toilets.
What you need to know:
- Six billion own handsets compared to only 4.5 billion with access to latrines, says study
More people around the world have access to mobile phones than toilets, a United Nations study says.
Addressing an international press conference, UN’s deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson said out of the world’s 7 billion people, 6 billion have mobile phones compared to only 4.5 billion people who can boast having access to a working toilet.
“Let’s face it — this is a problem that people do not like to talk about, but it goes to the heart of ensuring good health, a clean environment and fundamental human dignity for billions of people. Plans are under way to reduce by half the number of people without access to a toilet by 2015,” he said.
Release of the study coincides with a planned study on the effect of liquefied waste in pit latrines to underground water sources by two university researchers. The researchers have raised fears of contamination of ground water, which is exploited for domestic and industrial use in many countries.
Assistant Professor Jay Graham of George Washington University and Matthew Polizzotto of North Carolina State University estimate that 1.77 billion people use pit latrines, while 2.2 billion rely on underground water sources. Despite this correlation, very few studies have been conducted.
The situation calls for an in-depth study that will help identify technologies that can be used to protect ground water from contaminants from pit latrines.
In August 2012, the Bill Gates Foundation began its own effort to build an affordable eco-toilet that uses less water to help reduce the number of people around the world without access to sanitary waste disposal.
India, with 1 billion mobile phones, has the highest per cent of the world’s population without toilets, standing at an estimated 626 million individuals.
China has only 14 million people without access to a toilet. However, there are also fewer cell phones in China, numbering 986 million.
Lack of toilets has also been blamed for the deaths of more than 750,000 people annually from waterborne diseases.
