Poor sanitation puts children at risk of childhood diseases and malnutrition that can impact their overall development, learning and, later in life, economic opportunities. While some parts of the world have improved access to sanitation, millions of children in poor and rural areas have been left behind. The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF (JMP) has been publishing reports of updated estimates every two years on the use of various types of drinking-water sources and sanitation facilities at the national, regional and global levels. The JMP report for 2015 stated that: [37] Without better infrastructure and management, millions of people will continue to die every year from water-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea, and there will be further losses in biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, undermining prosperity and efforts towards a more sustainable What can we do? Diarrhoeal disease". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 2014-04-01 . Retrieved 2017-11-17. By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes

Shepard, J.; Stevens, C.; Mikhael, G. (2017). The world can't wait for sewers; Advancing container-based sanitation businesses as a viable answer to the global sanitation crisis. EY, WSUP. Sanitation can include personal sanitation and public hygiene. Personal sanitation work can include handling menstrual waste, cleaning household toilets, and managing household garbage. Public sanitation work can involve garbage collection, transfer and treatment ( municipal solid waste management), cleaning drains, streets, schools, trains, public spaces, community toilets and public toilets, sewers, operating sewage treatment plants, etc. [15] :4 Workers who provide these services for other people are called sanitation workers. Sanitation". Health topics. World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 2020-06-06 . Retrieved 2020-10-05.

Tilley, E., Ulrich, L., Lüthi, C., Reymond, Ph. and Zurbrügg, C. (2014). Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies. 2nd Revised Edition. Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Duebendorf, Switzerland

UNICEF is on the ground in more than 100 countries to provide safe sanitation for the world's most vulnerable communities in rural and urban areas, and during emergencies. UNICEF Kenya works closely with the Government, donors and civil society to help increase children and families’ access to safe water and basic sanitation, especially in the arid and semi-arid land (ASAL) counties, where this is lowest. We innovate to find new ways to provide water in the face of increasing droughts caused by climate change. Environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected to disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise pollution control. According to World health organization (WHO) Environmental sanitation was defined as the control of all those factors in the physical environment which exercise a harmful effect on human being physical development, health and survival. One of the primary function of environmental sanitation is to protect public health. UNICEF also supports WASH in health care facilities and district-wide WASH interventions, supporting planning and implementation and incorporating behaviour change into state and national guidelines and costed plans.

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Without basic sanitation services, people have no choice but to use inadequate communal latrines or to practise open defecation, posing a risk to health and livelihoods. Of these, 419 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water. Environmental Biotechnology: Advancement in Water And Wastewater Application, edited by Z. Ujang, IWA Proceedings, Malaysia (2003) Collaboration and convergence are a vital feature of the UNICEF Country Programme in India, where WASH is positioned as cross-cutting support contributing towards results in all aspects of a child’s survival, growth and development. reducing the spread of intestinal worms, schistosomiasis and trachoma, which are neglected tropical diseases that cause suffering for millions;