WASH United featured on Gates Foundation Blog!

An orphaned issue

Imagine if an airline crashed a jumbo jet every day for a week. Public outrage would ensue, and media all over the world would have a field day. Preventable diseases caused by a lack of toilets and poor hygiene kill the equivalent of eight 747’s filled with children every day. However, there still is only one day each year when we even stand a reasonable chance of finding some toilet talk in the media: World Toilet Day. 

So why is it that the world doesn’t seem to give a sh*t about this massive crisis? According to Haile Gebrselassie, two time Olympic gold medalist and WASH United ambassador for Ethiopia, a key problem is that “sanitation and related issues of hygiene, particularly women’s hygiene, are still considered ‘dirty’ issues and people are uncomfortable to talk about them. But if you cannot openly talk about an issue, you also cannot change it.”

 

To read the full article, please visit the Gates Foundation blog Impatient Optimists.

 

 

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