The World Sanitation Summit – World Toilet Summit – will take place for the first time in Brazil and Latin America. The international event will be held in São Paulo and will discuss more effective actions in treated water, basic sanitation and hygiene.
O World Toilet Organization (WTO) next to the Instituto Trata Brasil will organize the first edition of the “World Toilet Summit – Basic Sanitation in Latin America: leaving no one behind”. The 19th edition will take place on November 18 and 19, 2019, in SP – Hotel Renaissance. It will have institutional support from UN Global Compact Brazil Network and the secretariats of International Relations and Tourism of the State of São Paulo.
The event has already taken place in several cities around the world, including Seoul (South Korea), Taipei (Taiwan), Beijing (China), Philadelphia (USA), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Melbourne (Australia) and Mumbai (India). The aim has always been to discuss the deficiencies in basic sanitation services. The problems range from the simplest, such as the lack of toilets, to the lack of access to treated water, sewage collection and treatment. These are realities that also impact Latin American society.
Basic sanitation scenario in Brazil
According to data from Brazil Sanitation Panel, data platform of the Trata Brasil Institute, Brazil still has almost 4 million inhabitants without bathrooms and this inequality harms several Brazilian social indicators.
The Panel also shows that women are the most affected when there is a lack of bathrooms. In 2017, women who did not have a bathroom in their homes had a monthly income of R$$ 444.57, while men in the same situation earned R$$ 503.95.
The study “Women & Sanitation”, developed by BRK Environmental, a CEBDS member, points out that workers without a bathroom at home earn 73.2% less than those who have a bathroom. In addition to the issue of gender and income, there are also impacts on education, among other factors.
Basic Sanitation and National Development
Poor basic sanitation harms the population's quality of life and the country's economic development, as pointed out by Study on the Economic Benefits of Basic Sanitation carried out by CEBDS and Instituto Trata Brasil. The lack of treated water causes health problems – which are often recurrent. This leads to people being absent from their jobs and the generation of public and private expenses for the treatment of these issues.
The sanitation situation has immediate repercussions on health indicators. The mortality rate for children up to 5 years of age was 16.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in Brazil in 2015. Although below the world average, the numbers are higher than the infant mortality rates in Cuba (5.5‰), Chile (8.1‰) or Costa Rica (9.7‰). Among its neighbors, Brazil's rates are also higher than those in Argentina (12.5‰) and Uruguay (10.1‰).
In terms of economic losses, workers who are most susceptible to diseases caused by poor sanitation have poorer health and worse performance. This affects their professional careers and the income potential they could develop in the job market. Health problems also cause children and young people to stop attending school and their educational performance, and harm their future potential in the job market.
Event data “World Toilet Summit – Basic Sanitation in Latin America: leaving no one behind”
Site: www.wtsbrasil2019.com
Date: November 17-19, 2019
Location: Renaissance Hotel – Sao Paulo
