By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Africa’s biggest problem is not drought, disease, or dictators (all massive problems) but drinking and defecation! And this is similarly true of India, Asia, and areas of South America. Fully 80 percent of diseases in developing countries are caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.
Africa, India, and some areas in South America are open cesspools where children play, parents wash clothes and get drinking water, workers irrigate crops, etc. In those areas, fresh water is unknown and open defecation (OD) is common.
Now for the first time in human history most people live in cities, often in the slums. More than 70 percent of Africa’s urban population lives in slums! Around one-third of the urban population in developing countries, nearly one billion people, live in slums, according to estimates. There is one toilet for every 500 people in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.
However, the biggest problem is in rural areas where the problem can be more quickly solved but not without difficulty. Nearly 540 million people, more than 60 percent of Africa’s population, currently practice open defecation according to the African Development Bank Group. And worldwide, more than a billion people still “go out back” to take care of one of life’s most important functions. Moreover, in all those areas, they do so where deadly cobras, lions, tigers, etc., roam freely–at night! Seems as if that ever-present danger would cause “bashful bladder” and “bashful bowel.”