Life-saving latrines: The world is witnessing a huge “toilet boom”

Around the world, more and more people can go to the toilet safely. Since the turn of the millennium, hundreds of millions of toilets have been built around the world, and even if it doesn’t sound very glamorous, it is a big step forward that saves thousands of lives every single day. For a large proportion of the world’s population, going to the toilet is potentially life-threatening, both for themselves and the people around them. This is due to unsafe toilets and latrines, which fail to keep bacteria separate from people. It is of course even worse if you do not have access to a toilet and have to defecate in the open – every day millions of people go to the toilet in rivers, in fields, along railway tracks and on roads. Villages and slums turn into open toilets. It spreads diseases. Every year more than one and a half million people die just from simple diarrheal diseases, which are spread via unsafe toilets, unclean drinking water and a lack of facilities for washing hands. Still a long way to go There is actually quite a toilet revolution about to happen. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization WHO, the number of people without any access to toilets fell by more than two-thirds, and the number of people with unsafe toilets was halved between 2000 and 2022. At the same time, we have become many people in the world. In rounded figures, this means that three billion more people have gained infection-free toilet conditions – and this progress has occurred all over the globe. In India in particular, toilets have been built at a furious pace, 100 million toilets in five years, and the proportion of Indians who go to the toilet in the open has fallen from three out of four to one tenth. In the African countries south of the Sahara, it has been halved, from every third to every sixth person. Although latrines are being dug and toilets are being built en masse, there is still a long way to go. One billion people do not have access to infection-free toilets, and diarrheal diseases still cost one and a half million human lives annually, of which around half a million are young children.



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