Access to sanitation facilities is a fundamental human right that safeguards health and human dignity. Every human being deserves to be protected from the many health problems-including dysentery, cholera and other serious infections-posed by poor disposal of excreta. Unless immediate action is taken, the number of people without adequate sanitation will climb to more than 4.5 billion in just 20 years. Hardest hit will be the marginalised poor living in densely populated cities that even today manage to provide only two thirds of their population with sanitation services.
This book is about setting in place a process whereby people effect and sustain a hygienic and healthy environment for themselves. It talks about developing programmes for more effective investment in sanitation and hygiene promotion. It is not about developing projects and it does not give solutions for project-level interventions. Rather it lays out a process for long-term change which may encompass institutional transformation of the policy and organisational arrangements for provision of goods and services. |
