Some 2.6 billion people worldwide have one thing in common—they do not have access to sanitation—but the World Bank is helping change that.
To raise awareness for this crisis, this year’s World Water Day
will focus on sanitation.

Worldwide, about 1.7 million deaths a year—90 percent of which are children—are attributed to unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene, mainly through infectious diarrhea. Access to sanitation, the practice of good hygiene, and a safe water supply could save 1.5 million children a year.

As the world’s largest investor in sanitation and wastewater, the Bank helps improve sanitation services that reduce illness, generate economic benefits, and reduce the environmental squalor that directly harms people around the globe. Active World Bank lending for sanitation and wastewater management is US$4.3 billion (40 percent of the total World Bank water supply and sanitation lending). Much of this investment is in urban sewage and wastewater treatment in pursuit of environmental protection goals. Increasingly, however, the Bank is supporting demand-responsive, low-cost, on-site sanitation in rural areas and  towns, and sanitation in urban slums.

In addition, the Water and Sanitation Program, a multi-donor partnership of the World Bank, has led or supported many of the advances made within the water and sanitation sector.

In only 14 years more than 1 billion people have gained access to sanitation. But because of population growth, the rate of sanitation provision needs to be doubled to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to hygienic sanitation by 2015. Doubling the effort will not be easy, but it is achievable.

Sanitation and wastewater commitments have effectively tripled since 1990 and nearly doubled since 2002. This growth reflects increasing client concern, the effects of the MDGs, and the efforts of World Bank staff to raise the profile of sanitation and wastewater with clients.

Sanitation Saves Money

Poor sanitation is responsible for at least $9 billion in economic losses per year in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam combined, says a new Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) study --Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Southeast Asia. The most devastating impact of poor sanitation is an increased risk of infectious disease and premature death, accounting for about half of these losses.

Poor sanitation also contributes significantly to water pollution—adding to the cost of safe freshwater for households, and reducing the production of fish in rivers and lakes. The costs of environmental and health degradation due to inadequate WSS, has been estimated at over 1% of GDP in Colombia, 0.6% in Tunisia, and 1.4% in Bangladesh.

Improved sanitation increases primary school enrollment, reduces illnesses so children miss fewer school days, increases productivity among adults, provides safety to women, and reduces the pollution of water resources.

To find out more about what the World Bank, WSP, and our partners are doing to improve the sanitation situation, visit www.worldbank.org/watsan and www.wsp.org.