Sanitation investment in poor countries would yield $9-to-1 benefits in productivity, health: UN

World Water Day focuses on providing toilets in poor countries

Experts estimate that $9 in productivity, health and other benefits are returned for every dollar invested installing toilets for people in countries that today are off-track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

Some argue that meeting the sanitation MDG is also a prerequisite to the goals of reducing global poverty.

Achieving the sanitation goal – to simply halve the number of people without access to a toilet by 2015 – would cost $38 billion, less than 1% of annual world military spending. That investment, however, would yield $347 billion worth of benefits – much of it related to higher productivity and improved health.

According to UN figures, meeting the sanitation MDG target would add 3.2 billion annual working days worldwide. Universal coverage would add more than four times as many working days.

Some 2.6 billion people – over a third of humanity – lack access to adequate sanitation. Each of those devotes a conservatively estimated 30 minutes a day queuing for public toilets and / or seeking seclusion. The cumulative time involved equals about two working days per month.

A more drastic consequence, however, is the number of workdays lost to diarrhoeal disease – either by ill workers or when she or he is caring for a sick child or relative.

In addition, many women avoid workdays during menstruation when workplaces have no toilets.

Health Impacts

Diarrhoeal disease is a leading cause of death and illness, killing 1.8 million people each year. Poor hygiene and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to 88 per cent of all deaths from diarrhoeal disease, with children paying the highest price: 5,000 deaths a day. Hundreds of millions of other children suffer reduced physical growth and impaired cognitive functions due to intestinal worms.

Improved access to sanitation would also lead to very high avoided health sector costs, according to UN research.

On a typical day in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, half the hospital beds are occupied by people afflicted with faecal-borne disease. Treating preventable infectious diarrhoea consumes 12 percent of the region’s total health budget.

Globally, $552 million in direct treatment costs would be avoided by meeting the MDG sanitation target.

Around the world, an estimated 200 million tons of human waste and untold millions of tons of wastewater are discharged uncontained and untreated, into watercourses every year. As a result, humans are regularly exposed to bacteria, viruses and parasites – spread through direct or indirect contact with these watercourses. Such exposure is the leading cause for diarrhoeal disease (including dysentery and cholera), parasitic infections, worm infestations and trachoma.