World Toilet Day highlights the global sanitation crisis

The toilet crisis is the most severe in parts of Africa and Asia facing extreme poverty and a demographic boom.

One in five primary schools and one in eight high schools in the world do not have toilets, the WaterAid group announced on Monday in a new report celebrating the US-designated day of toilets as part of efforts to end to the global sanitation crisis.

An estimated 4.5 billion people around the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, the report said. According to US government figures, some 2.5 billion of them do not have adequate toilets. The lack of toilets forces many people to defecate in the open air – in the streets, in bushes, near rivers and other sources of water.

Among the development goals set by the UK in 2015, it is expected to ensure that everyone has access to safe toilets by 2030. However, activists warn that it will be difficult to achieve this goal if governments and businesses do not invest more in the sanitation economy.

Sanitation is "the business of the decade," said Cheryl Hicks, general manager of the Geneva-based group Toilet Board Coalition. She told The Associated Press that the group was urging commercial investments to reduce toilet shortages in countries where governments can not afford such infrastructure.

"Half of the world needs toilets, they do not have them because the infrastructure is too expensive for governments," she said.

African countries are among the most needy.

The new WaterAid report mentions about 344 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who do not have toilets at home, making them vulnerable to diarrhea and other water-borne infections.

In West Guinea, one of the 101 countries surveyed by WaterAid in West Africa, eight out of ten schools do not have adequate toilets. The same study found that 93% of households in Ethiopia, an East African country, do not have decent toilets.

Joel Ssimbwa, an entrepreneur who has built two low-cost facilities in poor slums of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, said that he had started his business in 2016 after needing to calm down several times but that he was not the only one to be in business. he had "nowhere to go".

In September 2007, a Ugandan lawmaker told the press that he was "in a desperate situation" and helpless after being photographed urinating against a wall in front of the Finance Ministry in Kampala. He was subsequently charged and fined, despite his protests against the lack of nearby sanitary facilities.

There are fewer than 20 free public toilets in Kampala, a city of more than 3 million inhabitants. The toilets in city buildings are often kept under lock and key, apparently to keep unwanted users away.

Ssimbwa has acknowledged that the Shs300 (8 cents) he charges can still be unaffordable for many, so he is working on a business model that would allow his customers to pay a flat monthly fee instead of having to pay for each registration.

"It is a drop of water in the ocean, but it creates a consciousness" of what the government and others have to do, he said in speaking of his services.

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