The world has more cellphones than toilets.
Currently, six billion people on Earth have cellphones, yet only 4.5 billion people have access to a safe, clean bathroom.
That leaves a glaring mobile phone/ toilet gap that’s a glaring reminder of the pace of modernization. Of the seven billion people on Earth, 2.5 billion don’t have access to a toilet, and over a million do not have a toilet at all. And as cellphones are becoming ubiquitous around the world, toilets can’t seem to catch up.
A UNICEF statement released Friday announced that 1800 children die every day from diseases preventable by water, sanitation and hygiene.
“Sometimes we focus so much on the big numbers, that we fail to see the human tragedies that underlie each statistic,” Sanjay Wijesekera said in the statement. “If 90 school buses filled with kindergartners were to crash every day, with no survivors, the world would take notice. But this is precisely what happens every single day because of poor water, sanitation and hygiene.” Wijesekera is global head of UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene program.
As NPR points out, almost 25 percent of these children live in India, where mobile phones are enjoying a boom, with massive amounts of Indians buying phones every day. Building sanitary toilets is expensive (at least more expensive than other methods of relieving oneself). However, building one toilet in India costs about as much as a Samsung phone with 4G.
“One of the biggest reasons for child mortality is water sanitation, we are still very undeserved when it comes to water sanitation facilities,” Andreas Lindstrom said a conference in Chile, reports Businessweek. “It’s still more risky to go to the bathroom in many countries than any other activity.” Lindstrom is program manager at the Stockholm International Water Institute.
