In 2014, India ranked first in the world for "open defecation" with 600 million out of nearly one billion people in the world who practice the practice.

This unhealthy weather called on the United Nations to launch a campaign in 2015, to end the phenomenon of open defecation by 2030, stressing that this is not impossible, and the organization claimed that the success of that campaign will have a great impact on public health, as diseases caused by poor sanitation facilities And from unsafe water, it causes the death of 10% of the 525,000 children killed by diarrhea annually around the world.

What does open defecation mean?

The United Nations explains the term "open defecation" as defecation in the open - for example in fields, forests, among bushes or in lakes and rivers - rather than using a toilet.

According to United Nations agencies - according to their data in 2019 - that among the 673 million people who practice this habit;

91% of them live in rural areas, while population growth - in countries such as Nigeria, Tanzania, Madagascar, Niger and some states of Oceania - is causing local growth in the practice.

One of the most common compulsions to “open defecation” is the lack of a toilet in the house (pixels).

optional motives

A qualitative study in rural Nepal, entitled "What stimulates open defecation?"

- It is published in the "Public Library of Science" - to understand the motives for not using the bathrooms, and classified the reasons into "voluntary and compulsive motives".

One of the most common compulsive motives is;

There is no toilet in the house at all, and there are no sewage networks.

The refusal to use latrines by choice is, in some societies, a habit and a fun outdoor activity in keeping with spiritual and religious norms.

There is another reason indicated by the study;

Although there is a private toilet in the house or a public toilet;

People have had to practice this because of rules restricting toilet use and hygiene issues in general.

For women - and the privacy issues and rules that prevent women from using the same toilet as men - they have been forced to look for places to defecate in the open.

The most common reason - according to the study - is the ingrained cultural base that makes this practice acceptable in some societies.

This is simply explained by Sue Coats, head of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Program at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - in an interview with the "BBC" (BBC) - saying that "just building latrines will not solve the problem, Because open defecation is a learned practice from the time you learn to walk. When you grow up in an environment where everyone does it - even if later in life you have access to sanitation - you will come back to it."

Community-led Comprehensive Sanitation: The most important and effective element is changing people's awareness (communication sites)

India is a model

In 2014, India was the first in the world to adopt this practice, with about 600 million out of about one billion people in the world who practice this practice.

The United Nations commissioned CLTS to end open defecation, and the logical solution was to build latrines or give people money to do so.

But the organization made it clear that the financial support is not very effective, as many of the latrines that have been built are often not used because the habit of leaving the house has not been undone, and household latrines were used as chicken cages or even temples sometimes, so the organization emphasized that the most important element What is effective is to change people's consciousness, according to the NPR media network.

In the same year (2014), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his intention to end this phenomenon in India before 2020 and build millions of toilets.

And Modi's promise appears to have been unquestionably serious. Three years later, the number has fallen to 344 million people who do not have regular access to toilets, according to central bank data.

The most significant event came in October 2019, when India announced that it had become open defecation-free under the Prime Minister's "Clean India" plan, and the construction of more than 110 million toilets.

However, open defecation did not end in India, as the government claimed, and according to CNN, the government focused too much on building latrines and failed to ensure that people actually used them, and also did not ensure that new latrines were properly maintained. True, with proper sewage disposal.

For several years NGOs and government have worked for the construction of latrines in the villages of India, but they have found that people are not using them, yet the tremendous progress in construction and use of latrines cannot be denied.

Perhaps India needs more effort to build awareness and convince people of the necessity and importance of using the toilet for better health.

Why is it such a dangerous exercise?

Open defecation is an affront to the dignity, health and well-being of human beings, especially girls and women;

Hundreds of millions of women lack privacy when menstruating, and this practice increases the potential for women and girls to be subjected to further sexual exploitation, which threatens their personal safety and public health.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF);

One gram of stool can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria and a thousand parasites.

Poor sanitation and hygiene practices - such as not washing hands with soap after defecation and before eating - cause more than 800,000 deaths from diarrhea annually, and this number exceeds the number of people who die from malaria each year.