650 million lack access to clean water

The report, Improving Nutrition Outcomes with Better Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, has included a huge amount of data collected during last few years.

Population with Access to Sanitation: Punjab (78%), KPK (71%), Sindh (61%), Baluchistan (37%). "We are also educating schools, communities in rural areas of India and asking people to come forward to construct a toilet in their houses", he said.

"Since 1990, access has improved by 22.8 percentage points, putting India at seventh out of eight countries for improvement in South Asia". This is the second-greatest decrease of 38 countries with measurable data in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It does not take a genius to figure out that there can be no significant development when people live in poor sanitary conditions.

A quarter of all children under five are stunted, and countless other children, as well as adults, are falling seriously ill, often suffering long-term, even lifelong, health and developmental consequences. To change this situation will take political commitment and financing from the very top.

"Sanitation, which is the safe separation of faeces and refuse from human contact and the environment, ensures that people are protected from the spread of preventable diseases such as soil transmitted helminthiasis, diarrhea, chronic malnutrition in children and cholera". "Many people in the USA have no idea that millions of women and girls endure harassment and attacks when they have no place safe to go to the bathroom, or that one child dies every two minutes from diarrheal diseases directly linked to the lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene".

While most people seem to have easy access to at least one toilet, billions of others reportedly can not say the same thing.

Bathgate has been named Scotland's first official toilet twinned town after locals raised money for sanitation programmes in poor countries.

The state of the world's toilets is no joke - universal access is achievable with effort from all sides.

· Not everyone in the developed world has toilets. Children are healthier and stay in school longer when there is a safe, private toilet at home and decent toilets at school, leading to a more educated, more capable workforce to draw upon in future. "We also know that swift progress is possible, from the impressive advances in sanitation achieved in nations like Nepal and Vietnam".

Poor sanitation can lead to malnutrition, which is a factor in the deaths of 3 million children under the age of five every year, and has devastating, lifelong effects on the ability of those who survive it to do well in school and earn a living. World Toilet Day 2015 also comes on the heels of the global community agreeing to Agenda 2030 and a transformative sustainable development agenda. Raise awareness; learn about the day and of course Canadians can certainly give to Plan Canada.