Fight Against Open Defecation Continues: Using Outdoor Toilets to Improve Sanitation – Part 1

 WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founded by KP Yohannan, which inspired numerous charities like Gospel for Asia Canada, to assist the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this Special Report on the ongoing fight against open defecation, and how using outdoor toilets helps to improve sanitation.

Gospel for Asia (GFA World) reports on the ongoing fight against open defecation, using outdoor toilets to improve sanitation.

Since I first wrote about open defecation a few years ago, efforts to combat the problem have gathered momentum. A report compiled by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in June shows the percentage of people practicing open defecation declined from 21 percent (1.3 billion) in 2000 to 9 percent (673 million) by 2017.

Karen Burton Mains
Karen Burton Mains, author

While this is encouraging news, there is much more to be done. The United Nations (UN) says “some 2.2 billion people around the world do not have safely-managed drinking water, while 4.2 billion go without safe sanitation services and three billion lack basic handwashing facilities.”

“Mere access is not enough,” said Kelly Ann Naylor, UNICEF’s associate director of water, sanitation and hygiene. “If the water isn’t clean, isn’t safe to drink or is far away, and if toilet access is unsafe or limited, then we’re not delivering for the world’s children.”

In addition to the UN, this multi-faceted effort includes governments, non-governmental organizations and various Christian and non-Christian charities. All have launched initiatives that include long-term goals for ending this threat to the world’s health. The UN’s global sustainable development goals include ensuring that everyone has a safe toilet and that open defecation ends by 2030.

Children investigate new toilet
Children in Cote d'Ivoire investigate their community's newly improved toilets, one of the UNOCI’s “quick impact projects” (QIPS) which supported the rehabilitation of schools and toilets in Abidjan. UN Photo/Patricia Esteve

People using the bathroom outdoors with no toilet nearby nor sanitary treatment of their discharge has fueled disease, created serious health problems and endangered female safety by exposing them to possible rape or other abuse. Then there is the particularly stomach-turning incident from July 2018, when a 3-year-old South African boy drowned in a pit latrine—a type of crude toilet that collects feces in a hole in the ground. Four years earlier in the same province, a 5-year-old boy drowned in a school toilet.

Such horror stories help explain the need for “World Toilet Day,” which falls every year on November 19. Inaugurated in 2013, the UN-sponsored observance urges member states to encourage behavioral changes and implement policies to increase access to sanitation among the poor. Despite progress in recent years, the situation is serious, as shown by the June UN report.

Among key sanitation facts from WHO:

  • In 2017, only 45 percent of the global population used a safely managed sanitation service.
  • Two billion people do not have basic sanitation facilities, such as a toilet or latrine.
  • At least 10 percent of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.
  • Poor sanitation is linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.
In short, open defecation is a worldwide health crisis, one that demands a caring response from the world—especially those who profess to follow Christ.

GFA World supporters visit outdoor toilet installed by Believers Eastern Church in South Asia
GFA World supporters get the opportunity to visit an outdoor toilet installed by Believers Eastern Church for the benefit of multiple families in this neighborhood around Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. During 2019, 5,428 toilets like these were installed by GFA across South Asia to help improve the sanitation challenges in many developing communities.


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