By IANS
New Delhi : The World Toilet Summit will be inaugurated Tuesday in the capital by former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Experts will deliberate and prepare a roadmap for providing toilet facilities to an estimated 2.6 billion people across the globe.`
Sanitation experts from 40 countries will brainstorm for four days in the capital city before drawing an international roadmap to “provide toilets to all”.
“The summit will help exchange ideas on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of providing clean sanitation to all across the globe,” Bindeshwar Pathak, a leading sanitation expert and founder of Sulabh International, said Tuesday.
As many as 2.6 billion people, 20 percent of them in India, have no access to toilet facilities.
While over 50 percent of Indians have no access to toilet, India aims at achieving open-defecation-free status by the end of 2012.
This 2007 summit will deliberate on innovative and integrated approaches that respect cultural diversities to meet the sanitation needs of people worldwide. It will work towards developing strategies, best practices and ways of development of effective partnerships between the stakeholders.
It will also focus on ways to scale up sanitation coverage in the International Year of Sanitation 2008, as well as accelerate efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goal on Water and Sanitation by 2015.
Experts said open defection contaminates water and helps the spread of diseases like diarrhoea, which kills at least 4,900 people everyday worldwide.
Pathak’s Sulabh International and Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation will host the four-day summit in collaboration with the Indian government.
The international experts would also deliberate on cheaper technologies so that economically weaker section can afford the construction of toilets in India and other countries.
The world Toilet Summits were earlier held in Russia (2006), Northern Ireland (2005) and China (2004). Earlier, the summits were held in Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.