Sanitation shortcomings spotlighted at World Water Week

STOCKHOLM – Concern over sanitation emerges as a primary focus at this year’s water summit in Sweden. Stockholm International Water Institute’s executive director, Anders Bertnell, calls the state of sanitation across the globe “one of the world’s greatest scandals.”

As experts in the water sector deliberate over the future of the resource, as well as its many human uses and abuses, they also pay close attention to a recent WHO-UNICEF report on water and sanitation, Trading Markets announces.

Chair of the U.N. Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who is attending the summit, speaks of a general ignorance regarding sanitation shortcomings.

He notes that “very many people are still not familiar with the statistics or even aware that there is a global sanitation crisis.” Among those unaware, he spotlights policy-makers and opinion leaders who lack an empathetic understanding about what it means to suffer from inadequate or inaccessible sanitation services.

“If we are to reach the target, we now need to provide at least 173 million people per year with access to improved sanitation,” reports the prince.

Read more here.

Source: Trading Markets