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Make a stink in 2008!
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. Throughout the year WaterAid will highlight the scandalous fact that over 2.6 billion people - 40% of the world's population - do not have a safe, clean or private place to go to the toilet; and we will be working hard to change this. Sanitation is in crisis. There is compelling evidence that sanitation brings the single greatest returns on investment of any development intervention (roughly $9 for every $1 spent). Yet it remains one of the most neglected and most off-track of the Millennium Development Goal targets. In the developing world, the costs of not investing in sanitation and water are huge. Infant deaths, lost work days, and missed school are estimated to have an economic cost of around $38 billion per year, with sanitation accounting for 92% of this value. And yet the potential returns are so great that sanitation, in effect, pays for itself many times over. Faced with the evidence, governments must act now to tackle this crisis. The year 2008 also marks the 150th anniversary of the 'Great Stink'. In 1858 the stench from the lack of sanitation in London made the Thames so vile that MPs were forced to tackle the crisis. Within 18 days a bill was passed and the engineer Joseph Bazalgette was tasked with the vast job of building the city's sewers. The resulting expansion of sanitation infrastructure in the 1880s contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following four decades, one of the most dramatic health improvements in history. The kind of political action shown in London in 1858 must now be taken across the developing world today. 2008 is the year to make this change. 2.6 billion people need action not words. It's time to make a stink about poor sanitation. >> Take action now with the End Water Poverty campaign >> Read our International Year of Sanitation issue ( >> Read the Metro feature on progress being made so far this year (
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