4000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.

European doctors: urgent sanitation investment needed to avert global health crisis

Medical professionals demand Europe keeps its promises to the poor on World Toilet Day

Poor sanitation in Bangladesh

19 November 2009

To mark World Toilet Day doctors across Europe today united in a plea to end the neglect of a global health crisis that is responsible for killing over 4,000 children every day – the lack of a safe toilet for over 2.5 billion people. 

In an open letter in support of the international End Water Poverty campaign, Presidents from four different Doctors’ Associations across the continent called on leaders to take action, highlighting how the very investments that helped Europe escape poverty and disease were being neglected in efforts to do the same in Africa and Asia.

Signatories to the letter wrote “investment in safe sanitation was one of the most important actions in slashing child mortality rates in our own countries, and allowing our economies to prosper. Yet today, across the developing world, the provision of these most basic services is sorely neglected, fatally undermining the global fight against poverty and disease.”

Globally, lack of access to safe sanitation and clean water is responsible for 28% of all deaths of children under-five. Over half of the hospital beds in Sub-Saharan Africa are filled with people suffering from preventable diarrheaol diseases, largely caused by this failure.

Dr Zlatko Fras, President of the European Union of Medical Specialists said: “With 10% of the global disease burden due to people not having access to the most basic of facilities - a safe toilet or clean water - we can’t afford not to take the sanitation crisis seriously.

“It is astonishing that 40% of the world’s population does not have access to something so basic and so life-saving as a toilet. Quite simply it is a health crisis requiring urgent attention by our continent’s leaders.”

Steve Cockburn, Coordinator of the international End Water Poverty campaign said: “That doctors across Europe are calling for sanitation to be at the centre of efforts to end poverty and disease is a real wake up call. It’s time to listen to medical advice: toilets save lives, and it’s a health imperative for Europe’s leaders to keep the promises they made to the world’s poor.”

In 2008 EU leaders signed the ‘EU Agenda for Action on the Millennium Development Goals’, committing to increasing investment in sanitation and water by €2billion per year by 2010, which on current trends will not be met.

For all media enquiries please contact: Steve Cockburn: +44 (0)20 7793 4960 or +44 (0)79200 80855