The World Toilet Day in murky numbers

 

Pressure and pleasure:Using the smartphone;and the toilet in China.

Today is, don't hold your nose, The World Toilet Day.  In a tweet today United Nations Water, which coordinates United Nations' water activities, billions of people live without a safe toilet “turning the environment into an open sewer.”

And, according to a report by the World Health Organization, "2.3 billion people around the globe defecate in the open due to the lack of toilets." United Nations Water also informs us that 445 million women and girls risk abuse and attack because they have no alternative but to use   the bush.

 As the figures get murkier, a report by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says that 5.6 million Kenyans do not use toilets, instead they defecate in bushes. This is 12 per cent of the country's population.

An average person uses the toilet six to eight times daily, which works up to 2,500 loo visits annually. In other words, three years of our lives are spent in the washroom.

According to a 2015/2016 survey released on March 24, 2018 by the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey (KIHBS), almost half of Kenya's counties are below the national average with some having over 70 per cent of their population without a toilet.

Counties are not doing a good job providing toilets. [File, Standard]

The KIHBS survey ranked Samburu as the County with the worst record of no toilet facility with 73.6 per cent of the respondents here said they use the bushes.

Samburu was followed by Turkana (64.9 per cent), Marsabit (52.2 per cent), West Pokot (51.2 per cent) and Kwale (47.5) per cent.

Garissa and Mandera counties also recorded more than a toilet absence of 40 per cent.

Counties that recorded good toilet access include Nyeri, Kisii, Nairobi, Nyamira, Kakamega and Vihiga.

Only 13 per cent (8,378) of villages in Kenya have been certified to be open-defecation-free out of 68,362, but this is an improvement as only 8 per cent of villages held this status in 2016, according to the Ministry of Health.