The active involvement of health professionals in hygiene,
sanitation and water supply is absolutely crucial to
accelerating and consolidating global health progress, says a
new series of papers in PLoS Medicine by a leading group of
public health academics and water advocates. Professor Sandy
Cairncross from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
(LSHTM) and colleagues show how water and sanitation issues are
woefully neglected across the world and suggest that action
could prevent more than 2 million children dying each year. The
authors say that in 2010, nearly 20 percent of the world's
population still defecates in the open and 2.6 billion people do
not have access to even a basic toilet. Unsafe sanitation and
drinking water, as well as poor hygiene, account for at least 7
percent of the total global disease burden, and nearly 20
percent of all child deaths in the world. Most of these
diseases, including diarrhea, can easily be prevented with cheap
and proven interventions such as pit latrines a