World Toilet Day drives awareness about the lack of access to toilets faced by Nigerians

On 19 November 2015, in commemoration of World Toilet Day, UNICEF released a media statement to raise awareness about the lack of access to toilets faced by 50 million Nigerians. The statement stressed that the lack of access to toilets is endangering the lives of millions of Nigerian children and that Nigeria had one of the world’s highest rates of open defecation.

In line with the 2015 theme “toilets and nutrition”, the statement pointed to emerging evidence of links between inadequate sanitation and malnutrition, adding that lack of sanitation, particularly open defecation, contributes to the incidence of diarrhea and to the spread of intestinal parasites, both of which cause malnutrition.

The statement was signed by the Head of UNICEF’s Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programmes, Sanjay Wijesekera. He says, “We need to bring concrete and innovative solutions to the problem of where people go to the toilet, otherwise we are failing millions. The proven link with malnutrition is one more thread that reinforces how interconnected our responses to sanitation have to be if we are to succeed.

A UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Jean Gough, noted that Nigeria has made major progress in addressing both access to sanitation and the nutritional status of its children. He said, “In 2008, we had only 15 rural communities that were free of open defecation. Today, thanks to concerted efforts by the Government and partners, including UKAID, the EU and UNICEF, there are more than 12,000.”

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