Redefining shared sanitation. WHO Bulletin, July 2015.
Authors: Thilde Rheinländer, Flemming Konradsen, Bernard Keraita, Patrick Apoya, and Margaret Gyapong
The proportion of people depending on shared toilets is higher in the least developed countries (16%) and highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where 19% of the population depends on shared sanitation. In the same region, a staggering 33% of the urban population depends on shared sanitation, and in 17 sub-Saharan countries the rates of people using shared sanitation is on the increase. In four Asian countries, Bangladesh, China, Mongolia and the Philippines, over 15% of the population depend on shared sanitation – a number that increases daily.
Current definitions do not account for the diversity of shared sanitation: all shared toilet facilities are by default classified as unimproved by JMP because of the tendency for shared toilets to be poorly managed and unhygienic. However, we argue that shared sanitation should not be automatically assumed to be unimproved.
