The world today is experiencing unprecedented demographic growth and consequent urbanization of various places. Rapid population growth in urban areas usually gets coupled with poor planning of physical and social infrastructure along with a lack of individual and communal sanitary consciousness. Such conditions are apt to precipitate poor sanitary practices among urban inhabitants. Open defecation and urination are still rampant in urbanized areas of developing economies and such practices pose a grave risk to the health of the citizens. The World Health Organization and UNICEF link open defecation with grim issues such as poverty, malnutrition, child mortality and large disparities between the rich and poor.
Around the world, around 827,000 people from low- and middle-income countries die because of inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene each year. Poor sanitation is believed to be the main cause of almost 50% of these deaths. The world is currently facing (witnessing) the COVID-19 pandemic, a calamity of an unforeseen scale that has struck almost every nation. We have also been through other epidemics like SARS, ebola, Cholera, wherein a sizeable portion of the population suffered. Poor sanitation is also one of the prime factors in the onslaught and spread of epidemics and pandemics, calamities that cripple the world’s economy and social fabric.
Owing to the dire importance of communal sanitation and hygiene, there is an urgent need to develop an integrated approach concerning the development of public health services. Although sanitation is expensive, the lack of it hinders the development and safety and generates exponential levels of pollution that severely compromise emerging nations’ liveability.
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