Toilet Twinning from CORD - Nairobi's Flying Toilets

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For every $1dollar spent on sanitation at least $9dollars are saved in health, education and economic development (UN)

Sanitation is more important than independence

In the future the flush toilet will become extinct. It makes no sense to flush excreta with precious drinking water. It's costly in terms of money and energy. In rural areas dry toilets have already become the best accepted technology. It's called Ecological Sanitation.

At current rates of progress the Millennium Development Goals sanitation target will not be met until the 22nd century. That's over 80 years too late!

For every $1dollar spent on sanitation at least $9dollars are saved in health, education and economic development (UN)

Children will continue to suffer the most with shortened life spans, missed schooling, disease, malnutrition and poverty.

60% of all rural diseases are caused by poor hygiene and sanitation.

More than 433 million school days are lost each year because of water-borne disease.

At any one time, half of the world's hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water-borne diseases caused by pollution from untreated sewage.

A baby born in sub-Saharan Africa is 500 times more likely to die from diarrhoeal diseases than a baby in the developed world. Even worse Diarrhoea can lead to severe malnutrition which contributed to 6 million child deaths a year.

Every day 5,000 children under 5 die needlessly from diarrhoeal diseases caused by dirty water.

In Africa it is estimated that 5% of GDP is lost to the illnesses and deaths caused by poor sanitation and water. (Source: UN)

40% of the world’s population who have to use fields, streams, rivers, railway lines, canal banks, roadsides, plastic bags, or squalid, disease breeding buckets.

Without toilets, disease and death are rife. Illness prevents people from working. It stops children going to school. It stops peace being built.

Without toilets, human waste can contaminate water, food and causes the majority of illness in the world. Illnesses like diarrhoea, which stop children growing healthily and lead to malnutrition.

One gram of faeces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs.

Every day 2.6 billion people do not have somewhere safe, private or hygienic to go to the toilet.

Nairobi's Flying Toilets

"Please don't step on any plastic. It might contain a bomb!" warns John Murage, assistant project officer for the African Medical Research Foundation's (Amref) Integrated Primary Health Care Programme in Nairobi's Kibera slums. Murage gingerly picks his way along the rough dirt track that snakes between the tightly-packed mud houses. An open sewer of grey stagnant water cuts through the middle, littered with empty milk cartons, plastic bags and broken bottles. The smell is horrendous.

The "bomb" he is looking out for, also known as "scud missiles" or "flying toilets", are human faeces wrapped in plastic. Flying toilets are a common hazard in Kibera, Africa's largest slum with an estimated population of 500,000 to 750,000.

Amref are working in one section of the slum called Laini Saba. In 1998, there were just 10 working pit latrines for 40,000 people.
"These people are so disciplined you rarely see them relieving themselves. They only go for a long call at night in between the houses. They put the waste in a polythene bag and throw it on to the nearest roof or pathway," explains Rysper Rajula, the project manager.

Most residents live in temporary mud houses on public land that has been illegally ''distributed'' or appropriated. It is an uncertain existence with regular disputes over plot ownership.

Given that the settlements are illegal, landlords are not obliged to provide any services - no latrines or water, no electricity, no rubbish collection, no infrastructure, totally inadequate housing, no repairs or maintenance and open sewers filled with stinking, raw sewage.

Overcrowding is a massive problem. Most homes are a single room shared by up to five people, often with leaking roofs, poorly finished mud floors and no window.
The end result is extremely poor health. Poor sanitation encourages the spread of diseases like typhoid, worm infestations and skin diseases. The open sewers are a breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes.

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