Open defecation

According to experts, 90,000 children die of water-borne diseases across Sindh every year

Health experts have explored a strange link between defecating in the open and stunting. They insist that open defecation is effectively impeding the intellectual capacity of a huge population of Sindh province, while warning that unless people stop urinating and defecating in the open, more than half the next generation will be stunted. While the very link is pretty far-fetched, it is quite understandable that open defection is a source of contaminated food and water which do give rise to diseases like hepatitis A and E, typhoid and diarrhea, besides causing malnutrition. According to experts, 900,000 children die of water-borne diseases across Pakistan every year, and of them 90,000 belong to Sindh.

That eradication of open defecation — as part of steps to improve the general level of cleanliness and hygiene — will effectively improve the overall healthcare of people is hardly debatable. And towards that end, the Sindh government’s sanitation policy — with the motto Saaf Suthro Sindh i.e. Neat and Clean Sindh — meant to eradicate open defecation by 2025 is commendable. The implementation of the policy, however, remains a serious challenge, with the people working with rural communities not too confident about the prospects. They feel it is a daunting task to do away with this centuries-old practice from rural settlements, where a vast majority of adults, including women, prefer to go to the fields to defecate while children attend to the call of nature anywhere they wish to.

The pace of the sanitation programme is another area that has come under criticism. Experts, while believing that the Sindh government’s speed to eradicate open defecation does not match its aims, call for a vigorous mass drive to meet the target of eradicating the practice of open defecation within the stipulated time period. If our experts are to be believed, proper physical and mental growth is not possible without zero open defecation.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2019.

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