ABSTRACT
More than 2.5 billion people, roughly 38 percent of the world’s population, lack access to basic sanitation facilities while more than a billion people continue to depend on unsafe drinking water supplies. Much of this population has access to only about 5 liters a day, as opposed to the minimum daily threshold of about 20 liters (UNDP 2006). Worldwide, the proportion of people without improved sanitation decreased by only 8 percent between 1990 and 2006. Without an immediate acceleration in progress, the world will not achieve even half the sanitation target by 2015, which means that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially on sanitation coverage, are in danger of not being fulfilled (WHO and UNICEF 2008). The focus now needs to be more specific, particularly on poor and marginalized groups where access to basic water supply and sanitation facilities is largely unsatisfactory. The majority of this population is concentrated in underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A similar situation is also prevalent in the entire region of South Asia where inequality of human development between men and women is one of the highest, with very strong 123rural–urban divide in water supply and sanitation services and the access to basic health care facilities. For example, for the year 2009, Nepal had about 80 percent coverage in water supply and 43 percent in basic sanitation facilities, which goes to show that the country is grossly not on track in achieving MDGs for both water supply and sanitation (NPC 2010). In Nepal, around 80 percent of all diseases are attributed to water-and sanitation-related causes and account for around 13,000 child deaths each year from diarrhoeal diseases such as dysentery, jaundice, typhoid, and cholera (MOPPW 2008).
