Economic Effects of Sustainable Sanitation - SuSanA

Sanitation: facts and interrelationships
can be seen for the example of ―excreta – waterborne sewage – surface water – drinking water
– humans‖. Also changes of direction or leapfrogging can be perceived (―excreta – soil –
hands – food/humans‖ or ―excreta – flies – food – humans‖) (cf. Figure 6).
If no counter-measures are initiated, diarrhoea can lead to dehydration and debilitation and
might become life-threatening (Pschyrembel, 2010). Especially children are affected by
repeated incidences of diarrhoea that lead to underweight or malnutrition and finally to death
(cf. 2.2) (Prüss-Üstün et al., 2008, p. 7).
Figure 6: Transmission pathways of diarrhoeal diseases (Prüss et al., 2002, p. 538)
2.4 Sanitation – The status quo
As already mentioned in chapter 1, 2.6 billion people did not have access to improved
sanitation facilities 20 in the year 2006. However, this number is not distributed
homogeneously over the whole world. Close to every person in developed countries uses
improved sanitation, but only about half of the people living in developing countries do so
(WHO/UNICEF, 2010, p. 6). Figure 7 illustrates the proportion of improved sanitation used
per country. The biggest proportions of people living without access to improved sanitation
live in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, and countries like Nepal, Papua-New Guinea
and Bolivia, where less than 50% have access to improved sanitation facilities. The biggest
countries of Southern-America and Russia itself range within the 76-90% class and China,
Indonesia, Peru and Colombia can be attributed to the 50-75% class.
20 Regarding the official classification cf. WHO/UNICEF (2010. p. 12). This chapter is confined to this
classification. It does not take into account sustainable sanitation.
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