Bill & Melinda Gates launch strategy for safe toilets

Accra, July 19, GNA - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday announced the launch of a strategy to help bring safe and clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world, according to a statement from the Foundation received in Accra.

In a keynote address at the 2011 AfricaSan Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s Global Development Program, called on donors, governments, the private sector, and NGOs to address the urgent challenge, which affects nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population.

Flush toilets are unavailable to the vast majority in the developing world, and billions of people lack safe, reliable toilet or latrine and more than a billion people defecate in the open.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet,” Burwell said in her speech at AfricaSan, the third African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene, organized by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW).

“But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.”

The foundation also announced $42 million in new sanitation grants that aim to spur innovations in the capture and storage of waste, as well as its processing into reusable energy, fertilizer, and fresh water.

In addition, the statement said, the foundation would support work with local communities to end open defecation and increase access to affordable, long-term sanitation solutions that people will want to use.

“Improved sanitation can have a significant impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide. Reducing by half the number of people who don’t have access to basic sanitation is a key target of the United Nations’ 2015 Millennium Development Goals. Access to safe sanitation reduces child diarrhoea by 30 percent and significantly increases school attendance,” the statement said.

Unsafe methods to capture and store waste lead to serious health problems and death. About 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhoeal disease, and most of these deaths could be prevented with the introduction of proper sanitation, along with safe drinking water and improved hygiene.

But Burwell emphasized that there were no silver bullets in reinventing the toilet.

“Addressing the needs of the 2.6 billion people who don’t have access to safe sanitation requires hygienic, affordable, and sustainable ways to capture, treat, and recycle human waste. Most importantly, it requires close collaboration with local communities to develop lasting sanitation solutions that meet their needs.”

Burwell said the foundation and its partners were working to develop new tools and technologies that would address every aspect of sanitation—from the development of waterless, hygienic toilets that did not rely on sewer connections to pit emptying to waste processing and recycling.

“Many of the solutions being developed involve cutting-edge technology that could turn human waste into fuel to power local communities, fertilizer to improve crops, or even safe drinking water.”

The statement said one of the foundation’s partners is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is launching the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for Life through its Development Innovation Ventures programme to fund projects that identify, test, and help scale up evidence-based approaches to delivering water, sanitation, and hygiene services to the poor.

It said both organizations will contribute $8.5 million to the four-year venture.

The foundation and its partners are focusing on affordable solutions and sanitation services must cost no more than five US cents per person per day and be easy to install, use, and maintain.

The foundation’s strategy involves gathering evidence to determine what people want and measuring what really works.

It includes stimulating demand for improved sanitation in both rural and urban communities through education and raising awareness.

It also involves advocacy efforts to engage governments and other public and private partners to prioritize sanitation policies that address this urgent issue.

The statement said “Across Africa, improved sanitation is an essential human need that we must take action to address,” said Mamadou Dia, President of the African Water Association. “We welcome efforts to focus new attention, ideas and resources on this important issue.”