Technical Guide to EcoSan Promotion

Sanitation coupled with hygienic hand washing after visits to the toilet is one of
the most cost-effective health interventions that exists. For instance, treating
preventable infectious diarrhoea eats up as much as 10% of the national health
budget. If the MDG target for sanitation is met, it is estimated this would add more
than three billion working days a year worldwide. Numerous work days are lost as a
result of illness either when a worker is sick or has to stay home to tend to a sick child.
Where workplaces have substandard toilets or none at all, women lose workdays
during their menstrual cycle. Improved sanitation such as EcoSan contributes to
social development. Part of this is simply by bestowing dignity on those who are
able to access it. No one likes searching for somewhere to defecate in the open or to
queue for using a toilet that is often smelly and in disrepair.
Privacy and hygiene are particularly crucial at schools. Schools should have separate
toilet facilities for teachers and students. If the schools are mixed, they should also
have separate facilities for girls and boys. It is well known that girls are reluctant to
attend schools if the toilet facilities are not private. This holds particularly true once
they reach puberty.
More than 500,000 Kenyan girls stay at home during their menstrual cycle. Or
put another way, girls attending school where the sanitation is poor miss out on 90
school days a year. Thus good sanitation increases female school enrolment. By the
same token, improved sanitation slashes absenteeism and contributes to a better
academic performance.
EcoSan protects the environment too. It sanitises and composts on site at no
additional cost to the user. This means that neither sewage nor effluent can pollute
the environment. By contrast, human waste contaminates water sources and soil
not only where sanitation does not exist, but where it does exist if that sanitation is
not EcoSan. In many countries around the world, an astonishing 90% of sewage is
discharged untreated into rivers. Effluent from pit latrines, including VIP latrines,
frequently seeps into the surrounding land.
2.10 The benefits of sanitation
Sanitation encompasses the removal, disposal and management of human
waste. Improved sanitation means having consistent access to safe, hygienic and
convenient toilet facilities. The basic requirements for improved sanitation systems
are privacy, safety, hygiene and convenience. Some 2.5 billion people, nearly half
the population of the developing world, are deprived of sanitation.
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