A new report titled Off-Track Off-Target, released by the international charity WaterAid, shows that there are many more people in today’s world lacking adequate sanitation services than in 1990.
The report says that unless urgent action is taken, nearly all governments in Sub-Saharan African will fail to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) pledge they made to halve the proportion of people without sanitation by 2015.The report says that on the current trajectory it will take over two centuries for Sub-Saharan Africa to meet its sanitation MDG target and all of this has massive consequences for child mortality in Africa.
Only 20 countries in the region are on track to meet the water MDG target by 2015.
The report states that to get the sanitation and water MDGs back on track, countries in sub-Saharan Africa need to spend at least 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on these services.
The report also calls on donor countries to double global aid flows to water, sanitation and hygiene by prioritising an additional 10 billion US dollars per year.
The document also identifies that it is Africa’s poorest who are being left behind.
Poor people in Africa are five times less likely to have access to adequate sanitation and over 15 times more likely to practise open defecation than Africa’s rich people.