India has most open defecators: United Nations
India has most open defecators: United Nations

GENEVA- One billion people worldwide still practice "open defecation" and they need to be told that this leads to the spread of fatal diseases, U.N. experts said today at the launch of a study on drinking water and sanitation.

Societies that practice open defecation, putting them at risk from cholera, diarrhoea, dysentry, hepatitis A and typhoid, tend to have large income disparities and the world's highest numbers of deaths of children under 5 years old.


The country with the largest number of public defecators is India, which has 600 million. India's relatively "hands off" approach has long been at odds with the more successful strategy of neighboring Bangladesh, which has put a big focus on fighting water-borne diseases since the 1970s, said Luyendijk, a statistician at the U.N.'s children's fund UNICEF.




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