The World Toilet Day is a United Nations International Day usually observed on November 19 every year and was officially declared in 2013 at the 67th session of the UN general assembly. Toilets are important because access to a safe functioning toilet has a positive impact on public health, human dignity and personal safety, most especially women.
This year 2020 World Toilet day focuse on “sustainable sanitation and climate change” as climate change is getting worse, flood, drought and rising sea levels are threatening sanitation system, from toilet to septic tanks, to treatment plants, everyone must have sustainable sanitation and clean water as well as hand washing facility to maintain health security.
It’s saddening that open defecation is practised not only in rural areas but also in some semi-urban areas as some of the houses do not have toilet facilities especially those at new site. The practice is very dangerous to human health as human excreta contain a variety of microbes which include about 106 pathogenic virus.
If we are to get rid of open defecation by 2025, provision of latrine, proper sanitation awareness, behaviour change, communication and enhanced community-led total sanitation campaign and enforcement are the most likely joint strategies to enable both rural and pre-urban to combat open defecation.
Government while working on eradicating poverty through various interventions must also take bold steps by addressing this challenge of open defecation, not just by using the law but by implementing the laws and providing more toilet facilities where needed.
In conclusion aggressive campaign should be made on toilet, every building must have a minimum of one toilet, and government in all three tiers should consider building efficient toilet facilities at markets, parks and even at some strategic areas of our roads for travellers because as bad as it may sound, open defecation is no practice by the illiterate alone, the literate are guilty of the act too.
Nosimot Soneye,
Ogun State.
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