Africa Gears up for the International Year of Sanitation 2008
Media Advisory The African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and regional partners have announced plans for a high-level regional conference to specifically focus on the challenge of accelerating sanitation and hygiene programs in the continent. The AfricaSan Conference scheduled for 18-20 February, 2008 in Durban, South Africa will be among the key activities in the continent to mark the global International Year of Sanitation, AMCOW President Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua announced today. The International Year of Sanitation, launched yesterday at the UN Headquarters in New York, was set by the UN General Assembly to help accelerate progress on sanitation by putting the spotlight on this silent crisis. The AfricaSan + 5 Conference will follow-up five years after the First AfricaSan Conference of 2002 that helped to formulate a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) specifically for sanitation: to reduce, by half, the number of people without access to basic sanitation and hygiene by 2015. An