United Nations University / International Year of Sanitation
20-Mar-2008
Experts estimate that $9 in productivity, health and other benefits are returned for every dollar invested installing toilets for people in countries that today are off-track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.
Some argue that meeting the sanitation MDG is also a prerequisite to the goals of reducing global poverty.
Achieving the sanitation goal – to simply halve the number of people without access to a toilet by 2015 – would cost $38 billion, less than 1% of annual world military spending. That investment, however, would yield $347 billion worth of benefits – much of it related to higher productivity and improved health.
Full text: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/unu-sii031808.php
Coverage summary: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRwdzmg01IrTGUBebks6zaQ&hl=en
Example coverage, by Reuters, click here