Sanitation: the backbone of public health

Abstract

Although improvement in sanitation has been recognized as one of the key achievements in bringing a phenomenal change in the overall health status of populations in the industrialized world sanitary conditions remained grossly unsatisfactory in many developing countries. Many of the countries in the world, that have less than 50% coverage of improved drinking water sources are in Africa. About 42 percent of the population in subSaharan Africa is not served with improved water sources and only
36 percent have proper waste disposal facilities (1). As a result of these gross sanitary inadequacies diseases related to poor sanitary conditions such as food borne diseases are still among the major public health problems consuming much of the health resources.