| ” WHO says poor hygiene costs hundreds of thousands of lives | 2007.11.26 |
| SEOUL (AFP) - A senior UN health official said Thursday that better sanitation and hygiene could save hundreds of thousands of children's lives a year at a cost equal to what Europe spends annually on ice cream. Shigeru Omi, World Health Organization director for the Western Pacific, said 1.8 million worldwide die every year from diarrhea diseases mainly attributable to unsafe water supplies, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. "The majority of these deaths occur in Asia, with 90 percent of them children under five years of age. In fact, diarrhea is the second leading cause of childhood death in developing countries," he said. He was speaking at the launch of the World Toilet Association, a South Korea-based non-governmental organization aimed at helping the world's 2.6 billion people who live without toilets. Two thirds of them live in Asia, with more than half in China and India alone, according to Omi. |