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2
Unconventional Sewerage Systems: Their Role in Low-cost Urban Sanitation |
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The health of low-income communities in peri-urban areas of developing countries is extremely precarious. Infant and under-5 mortality rates are higher in peri-urban areas than rural areas, and these high rates of mortality, and also morbidity, are due to poverty, but they more directly reflect the gross inadequacies of peri-urban infrastructure, especially water and sanitation services. |
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Urban health in all countries is closely linked to high levels of water supply, sanitation and personal and domestic hygiene. Similarly, peri-urban ill-health in developing countries is a direct result of inadequate water supplies, inadequate sanitation facilities, inadequate collection of solid wastes and consequently low levels of personal and domestic hygiene. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that as much as 80 per cent of all morbidity in developing countries is due to water-and excretarelated diseases, i.e. a result inadequate water supplies and inadequate sanitation. If the peri-urban environment in developing countries is not changed, people will continue to be ill and, in the words of the late Barbara Ward, will 'continue to defecate themselves to death.' |
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The International Drinking Water Supply Decade (198190) strove, and its successor Safe Water 2000 (19912000) is striving, towards the goal of adequate water and adequate sanitation for all. However, population growth, coupled with insufficient investment, makes this an uphill struggle. None the less governments, |
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