UNICEF: 26 M Pinoys have no access to toilets

MANILA, Philippines - Some 26 million Filipinos still have no access to toilets, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday.

Citing records of a joint monitoring program of the UNICEF and World Health Organization (WHO) for 2012, Michael Emerson Gnilo, a specialist for the UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, noted that of these 26 million individuals, 7.4 million are still “openly defecating.”

“In the Philippines, there’s still about 30 percent of the population that don’t have access to sanitary toilets. That is approximately 26 million people. Can you imagine that? Someone still does not have a toilet,” Gnilo claimed during yesterday’s observance of the World Toilet Day organized by Unilever at the San Lazaro Hospital in Sta. Cruz, Manila.

Conducted every two years, the monitoring system revealed that most of these toilet-less households are found in rural areas like Masbate, Northern Samar, and provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

And based on a survey of the National Statistics Office (NSO), the number of Filipinos who defecate in the open had increased by 12 percent from 1998 to 2008. They come from the 20 percent poorest population.

“The worsening is in the rural areas, not in urban areas. In urban areas, it’s only two percent increase... Equity is an issue because the poorest 20 percent of the population in some places of the world are 20 times more likely to be openly defecating,” Gnilo said.

Poverty and lack of supplies are the primary reasons for the failure of many households to put up toilet facilities.

The UNICEF official warned that the lack of sanitary toilet could lead to the development of diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, parasitic worms, and infections especially among children. It could also result to stunting, malnutrition and poor mental development if the body fails to absorb the nutrients it needs.

He said having sanitary toilet is vital to the attainment of many targets of the Millennium Development Goals like the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; reducing child mortality rates; and improving maternal health and ensuring environmental sustainability.

But for UNICEF, a sanitary and proper toilet does not necessarily mean having the typical toilet bowls found in most households.

“A sanitary toilet is a (facility that has) separation between human contacts and the feces so it does not contaminate the water supply, does not physically touch and does not smell. It does not have to be the white toilet bowls,” Gnilo said.

He said there are other toilet bowls that are considered sanitary, “depending on the context.”

“So if you are speaking in a rural context where there are few houses that are separate from one another, you can have a dry pit, or a latrine that is separate from water source. But in urban context where houses are crammed, you cannot do that,” he added.