Schools Lack The Basic Facility of Toilets

Health is wealth. Indeed this is a true saying. If an individual is not healthy, then all wealth of the world is useless for him. Basic hygiene and sanitation is very important part of every individual’s life. It is a basic need that cannot be ignored. Numerous initiatives take place at a global level in order to create awareness for cleanliness.

Under the Swacch Bharat Initiative also, the construction of toilets was one of the major agendas. In the present day of the progressive world, Lack of toilets is a very shameful thing for India. Absence of clean environment and proper toilets especially in schools threatens the health, education and safety of nearly 620 million school going children all over the world. The statistics have reflected that every one in three schools suffer from the absence of adequate toilets and resultantly risk of diarrhoea and other similar infections increase. This leads to illness in young children and therefore, affects their education also as they are unable to attend school and lecturers regularly. As per a report that has been released, Guinea Bissau which is located in West Africa consists of the worst school toilets in the world whereas the Ethiopian children face an even worse scenario at home. About nearly 93% of homes do not have a decent toilet. One of the WaterAid spokeswoman stated that this shows that water and sanitation are big factors that affect everything around us. Due to the absence of toilets in schools, school children are forced to miss their classes and it resultantly affects their process of growing up. This poor condition adds a lot of danger of diarrhoea to the lives of millions of children all across the world. It kills nearly 289,000 children who are under the age of five years due to diarrhoea. As a result of various awareness campaigns that take place the situation has improved slightly especially in South Asia. In South Asia, the access to toilets in schools has improved to a great extent. Also, the schools in Bangladesh have now adequate access to decent toilets. On the other hand as per statistics nearly 73% students in India and 76% in Bhutan can access basic sanitation. Under the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan in India, a large number of toilets have been constructed. It is expected that in the near future, the situation will improve.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/lack-of-school-toilets-puts-620-mln-children-in-danger-report