South Asia's hygiene in focus

By Alastair Lawson
BBC correspondent in Dhaka

A conference has begun in Bangladesh on the dismal state of the region's sanitation.

Poor people lack access to sanitation

It will discuss why millions of children continue to die in the region because of unsanitary practices.

Politicians and experts from across South Asia are attending the South Asian Conference on Sanitation (Sacosan).

Organisers say that it is almost invariably the poor who lack access to proper sanitation facilities and that it is time for a radical rethink over how their needs can be met.

This conference is expected to come up with some hard-hitting warnings about the dangers for South Asia if sanitation is not improved.

Delegates will caution that unless human excretion is disposed of more hygienically the entire region, including Burma, faces a serious threat from disease and damage to the environment as its population gets bigger.

Alarming facts

The figures for Bangladesh speak for themselves.

The government says that 342 children under five years of age are dying every day due to diarrhoea caused by poor sanitation.

"Thirty-nine percent of the population of South Asia are without adequate access to sanitary facilities so the implications on people's health are massive, particularly in terms of their exposure to water-borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera," says conference coordinator Ryan Knox.

Improving sanitation in the region is not going to be easy.

It will cost millions of dollars to build new latrines and will require an extensive education campaign to encourage people to use them, but it is a price worth paying.

In Bangladesh alone 125,000 small children die every year and all of those deaths would be avoidable if people had access to clean drinking water and hygienic toilets.