Love for bush toilets stings 2015 goal

By GATONYE GATHURA

Kenya: Kenya is among nine countries in Africa with the highest number of people who are still defecating in the open and has no prospects of meeting the United Nations goal of ‘open defecation-free status’ by 2015.

Out of 34 sub-Saharan African countries, Kenyans are ranked among nine states most notorious for relieving themselves in the bush, open spaces and even in water bodies.

In this group of countries, defecating in the open has either increased or has not changed at all since 2005 despite the UN-led Sanitation Drive 2015 working to end the practice.

Kenya, which boasts of the strongest economy in the region, dubiously leads its neighbour, Uganda, in the number of people who are still helping themselves in the open.

Uganda, according to the survey carried out by the George Washington University, US and Korea University, is among six countries in the continent where this habit has decreased dramatically in the last decade.

Only four per cent of Ugandans are defecating in the open, Zambia is at six per cent while Malawi and Mali are at even per cent.

Medical doctors have long established that defecating in the open is one way of fuelling diarrheal diseases which are the second biggest killers of children in Kenya after pneumonia.

Kenya is further categorised among another five African countries — Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, Niger, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe — described as fragile because of intermittent internal conflicts.

The researchers say it may not be a coincidence that high rates of open defecation were found in countries experiencing some forms of internal conflict.

Published last week in the BMC Public Health journal, the study intimates that today Kenyans form a significant part of the 215 million Africans who continue to use the bush. “Only one country in our analysis, Angola, is on track to end open defecation by 2015 based on their performance between 2000 and 2010,” says the study.

The study says although open defecation in sub-Saharan African has decreased by eleven per cent in the last decade, the absolute number has actually increased by 33 million over the same period, due to population growth.

The researchers by Kenyans’ habit yet the country has a national sanitation policy and clear budget line yet countris like Angola that have neither are more disciplined.

“Angola, in the last decade, had a 21 per cent reduction in open defecation, but has no national sanitation policy, no public sector budget line and invests less than 0.1 per cent of its GDP in sanitation.”

It is estimated that 1.7 billion cases of diarrhoea occur every year, causing approximately 800,000 deaths among children under five worldwide. It is estimated that 1.1 billion people — 15 per cent of the global population — still engage in open defecation.