UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Toilets are still out of reach for more than one-third of the global population, with devastating consequences to the health and development of children, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday to mark the first World Toilet Day.
However, the key to bridging the gap lies within communities themselves, the UN agency said.
On July 24, the UN General Assembly proclaimed Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day in a bid to foster the availability of basic sanitation services for the world's poor.
Nearly 2,000 children die every day from preventable diarrheal diseases and poor sanitation and water supply leads to 260 billion U.S. dollars in annual losses in developing countries, the United Nations said.
"We must break the taboos and make sanitation for all a global development priority," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said in declaring Tuesday to be the inaugural World Toilet Day.
"Sanitation is central to human and environmental health. It is essential or sustainable development, dignity and opportunity," Ban said, launching a campaign to cut in half the number of people lacking decent sanitation, and end open defecation by the year 2025.
Since 1990, almost 1.9 billion people across the world gained access to improved sanitation, but in 2011 the total without access was still 36 percent of the global population, or approximately 2.5 billion people.
"Access to toilets remains the unmentionable, shameful secret for even some very prosperous countries," said Sanjay Wijesekera, the global head of UNICEF's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes. "But its invisibility doesn't make it harmless; in fact it is quite the reverse. Lack of access to toilets is quite literally killing children, making adults sick, and slowing progress -- day after day after day."
According to figures released by UNICEF earlier this year, lack to access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene is a leading cause of deaths from diarrhea in children under five, amounting to approximately 1,400 children dying each day.
UNICEF has spearheaded a social change movement that that has led more than 25 million people to end the practice of open defecation and now use toilets. The Community Approaches to Total Sanitation (CATS) program encourages communities to take the lead and identify their own measures to end open defecation, and has been achieving results at scale. At the last count, over 50 countries have implemented CATS and many governments have mainstreamed a similar approach into their national policy.
But despite this success, Wijesekera said more still needs to be done, and urgently, by countries, communities and individuals, principally to bring the taboo subject of toilets and open defecation from the shadows, discuss it frankly, and agree on tackling the problem.
UNICEF is promoting major pushes around the world on World Toilet Day, to bring awareness to the dangers of open defecation and the problem of lack of access to improved sanitation.
In India, where in 2011 approximately 65 percent of the population did not have access to improved sanitation, and over 620 million people defecated in the open, UNICEF India is rolling out Poo2loo, an on-line campaign addressing the issue of open defecation in the country.
In Mali, on World Toilet Day, UNICEF is launching a Sanitation Marketing Project in partnership with PSI-Mali and the National Directorate of Sanitation.
In Eritrea, there will be celebrations of certifications of Open Defecation Free communities throughout the country.
"Every action which spurs people to change their way of dealing with defecation brings us closer towards the goal of sanitation for all," said Wijesekera. "It is not easy, but it is certainly doable, and moreover, it is absolutely indispensable if we are expecting to live healthy lives in the 21st century."
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