ONE has partners on the ground in Turkey for the 5th World Water Forum. Our partners will be providing guest blog posts throughout the week to keep us updated on the meeting’s proceedings. Stay tuned for more in this series!

As I was quoted in the Associated Press the other day,“In America, diarrhea is bad takeout, in Chad, it’s the difference between life and death.”

I’m here at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul to help coordinate a journalist workshop on the health aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene. Journalists have come from as far away as Indonesia, Laos and Peru to learn about this massive, but surmountable, challenge.

We want to bring attention to this under-reported issue, as more children die of diarrhea and other water and sanitation related diseases than die of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Meanwhile, 80% of research and development funding for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor is spent on these “big three” diseases. We aim to point out this disparity, not to take away funding from the more well-known diseases, but to see that more resources go to solving the water and sanitation crisis.

What is also unique about preventing and treating diarrhea is that affordable solutions are available now. Ceramic water filters, rope pumps, and ecosan toilets are all effective and sustainable solutions.

Sessions this week at the World Water Forum are going to focus on vast array of topics, such as new technologies, entrepreneurship and child health. The issue of poor water and sanitation in schools will also be discussed by UNICEF. An astounding 50% of schools in the developing world do not have access to water and sanitation.

PATH, WSSCC (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council), and Water Advocates are a few of the organizers of the journalist forum. We hope that the workshop and forum will increase attention on the health aspects of the water and sanitation crisis. With 5,000 people dying each day due to dirty water, and poor sanitation and hygiene, this cannot wait.

-John Sauer, Water Advocates

Last week, we wrote about World Toilet Day. John Sauer from Water Advocates passed along this great post about raising awareness for better sanitation practices, and what we can do to help:

Public indifference to the HIVAIDS epidemic was chronicled in 1987 in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. As the author Randy Shilts lamented, “Everyone responded with an ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation.” Thankfully now there is attention to this deadly disease, but it wasn’t always the case.

Another pandemic—namely more than two dozen diseases associated with poor sanitation—now faces the same kind of unresponsiveness. Every 20 seconds a child dies of sanitation-related diseases, which kill five times as many children as HIVAIDS. As an article in the New England Journal of Medicine documents, pathogens that cause diarrheal diseases, tracoma, and guinea-worm are among the culprits. You didn’t think you can die of diarrhea did you? Well you probably can’t but those living where open defecation is the norm can. Human excrement: it is the last taboo.

Pushback on this topic is very real. A TIME Magazine review of Rose George’s new book on sanitation suggested that “a series of articles was plenty on this topic.” One US government official refused to release a statement on World Toilet Day because of objection to the word “toilet.” Progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015 will not be met, at current rates, until 2115. In fact, the original version of the MDGs didn’t have a sanitation target.

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Did you know that today is World Toilet Day? Of course you did. And while this may seem a bit silly at first, it’s worth remembering how many lives are lost due to water and sanitation-related diseases each year—as many as 2 million, in fact.

Here are some other fast facts to keep in mind, as we commemorate World Toilet Day:

• 6 in every 10 Africans lack access to a proper toilet.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, 322 million people lack access to clean water and 463 million people lack access to adequate sanitation.
• Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are a leading cause of child mortality: an estimated 5,000 children die daily from diarrhea, which is spread through poor sanitation and poor hygiene. Universal access to improved sanitation could reduce diarrhea-related morbidity by more than a third.
• Studies have found that about half of girls who drop out of primary school in sub-Saharan Africa do so because of a lack of separate toilets and easy access to safe water.

So have a chuckle if you’d like, but remember to be especially grateful if you’re blessed with proper and clean sanitation today—because many people, unfortunately, are not. You can find more articles about World Toilet Day here, here, and here.

-Chris Scott

John Sauer of Water Advocates sent us his op-ed that was featured in The Local regarding World Water Week.

Finding the toilet in Stockholm

Last week a mix of water and sanitation experts gathered for World Water Weekin Stockholm, Sweden to mull over the world’s biggest public health crisis. The problem is that not enough people paid attention.

Each year over 2 million deaths could be prevented with improvements related to access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. To put that in perspective, we have it within our grasp to prevent the equivalent deaths of 10 Asian tsunamis or 1,000 Hurricane Katrinas. Yet a major effort—like those that have been launched to address HIV/AIDS and malaria—to tackle the global drinking water and sanitation crisis remains elusive. The scope of this disconnect is baffling; water- and sanitation-related diseases (like relatively-easy-to-prevent diarrhea) kill more children each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

One reason why there hasn’t been a Herculean effort to address this global scourge is that we in the water and sanitation sector are not doing enough to influence how this issue is understood by others. We have not been proactive or coordinated enough to frame the issue to the media and the wider development community in an action-oriented “this-can-be-done” tone.

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African development was again the subject of G8 discussions as world leaders gathered in Toyako, Hokkaido in northern Japan from July 7-9 for the 2008 G8 Summit. While the G8 was confronted with multiple global challenges, including climate change and a weakening global economy, the 2008 Hokkaido Summit marked an important “mid point” moment in the fight against poverty. The Hokkaido Summit came at the critical halfway point to both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 Gleneagles promises to Africa. The G8 are dangerously behind on their landmark commitments to the region, having delivered only $3 billion of the promised $25 billion in additional assistance to Africa by 2010, according to the 2008 DATA Report.

After difficult negotiations, the G8 summit yielded small gains for the poorest. The bulk of G8 agreements on development and Africa and food security reiterated previous pledges rather than outlining new measures to get the group back on track. The G8 did announce plans for a new effort to tackle the global food crisis, though more details are needed to ensure its effectiveness and delivery. They highlighted the UN High-level meeting on the MDGs in September as an important opportunity to review progress and identify actions needed to overcome remaining challenges.

At a time when G8 credibility is at risk due to slow progress in delivering on commitments, there was a strong call for greater accountability in the G8 Communique. The G8 agreed to track progress against previous commitments in health, education, water and agriculture, as well as its compliance with anti-corruption measures.

Overall, the US, UK and Germany provided strong leadership in negotiations and have significantly increased their funding for Africa in recent years.

After the jump, the following brief overview of outcomes for Africa from the 2008 G8 Summit.

-Ben Hubbard

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Yesterday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced 2008 the “Year of Sanitation” and urged the world to increase investment in providing clean water and sanitation throughout the world.

From a Tuesday Reuters article:

“Investing approximately $10 billion per year can halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015,” [the U.N. statement] said.

The U.N.’s drive for better sanitation will involve regional conferences and public campaigns to raise awareness and implement projects to improve sanitation in developing countries through public and private partnerships.

UK-based charity WaterAid said the absence of clean toilet facilities, access to safe water and efficient sanitation was directly related to the spread of diseases that killed 1.8 million children a year.

It estimated the economic cost of not investing in sanitation and clean water at $38 million a year resulting from infant deaths, lost work days and school absences due to disease.”

Read the full article here.

-Virginia Simmons