Importance of Sanitation

Water sanitation as we have known for many years and was demonstrated by the broad street pump and cholera outbreak many years ago in London, is essential to the health and well being of the community. The readings and videos for this week make one thing clear, far too many people in this world lack adequate sanitation. It is no wonder why children are sick and are forced to miss school when their water system is contaminated by their own human excrement. I’m sure as we all know, our case study, http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd13/documents/bground_2.pdf points out that “Access to safe drinking water is a basic human right and essential for achieving gender equality.” When women have to travel several hours to get water, and then several hours back as they carry the water barrels on their backs, they are deprived of any potential promise of an education, and are continually subjected to multiple health hazards. The lack of healthy water not only posses a health risk to the entire community, but these societal norm have caused grave gender inequalities. Good, healthy water is an essential building block for all other health and wellness concerns; therefore, knowing that good water sanitation is part of the MGD’s is a start to alleviating the burden some of these developing countries are facing.