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Showing posts from March, 2008

WSSCC LAUNCHES THE GLOBAL SANITATION FUND

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) has launched the Global Sanitation Fund, the first global financing mechanism to increase expenditure on sanitation and hygiene. The Fund was officially Lunched on March 14 ,2008 in Geneva. Forty percent of the world’s population - 2.6 billion people - do not have access to basic sanitation. The Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people without access to sanitation is the furthest from being achieved. However, the estimated annual cost for attaining this goal is only $9.5 billion. If sustained, the same investment could ensure basic sanitation for the whole world in one or two decades. To help reach this target, the WSSCC has launched the Global Sanitation Fund, one of the major initiatives of the International Year of Sanitation 2008. Around the world, 10 million children die every year. Poor sanitation and hygiene are the chief or underlying causes in over half of these deaths. Diarrhoeal diseas