Celebrate World Toilet Day – buy a bog!

Rakiya Abdullah from Tamale, Ghana, worked with WaterAid to design a latrine that was appropriate for her family's needs.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

17 November 2008

This World Toilet Day, November 19 2008, WaterAid is aiming to help the 2.5 billion people – 40% of the world's population – without access to a toilet. The lack of clean water and sanitation causes 5,000 deaths every day worldwide.

To raise awareness of this global sanitation crisis and celebrate this humble, yet essential bathroom fixture, WaterAid are asking people to give someone a present they desperately need. For £46 you can give a gift that restores a family's health, pride and dignity – a toilet.

It may sound like a 'loo-dicrous' idea but for the two fifths of the world's population without anywhere safe and hygienic to go to the toilet, your gift could make a real difference.

In WaterAid's new online Shop for life you can also buy taps, rope pumps, puppets for hygiene promotion and even bags of cement to make latrine slabs, as well as a range of Christmas cards and t-shirts. Life-saving gifts start from £12 for a pair of taps.

Ada Oko-Williams, WaterAid's West African Sanitation Coordinator from Nigeria, said:

Buy a bog: £46 can buy a family toilet

Credit: WaterAid

"On the WaterAid Shop for Life site you can actually buy a toilet, you can even buy training for a mason. When you buy a latrine for a community this has great implications for their livelihood: they will have better lives, they will have more time to work because of less time being ill.

"You will have trained an expert who is able to train members of the community to design, build and construct the kinds of latrines that are suitable and appropriate to them. You will have paid for someone who is going to be indirectly supporting at least 500 persons – no less than 50 families. That's what it means!"

WaterAid's Shami Radia said:

"WaterAid's online shop is the ideal place to find a gift with a difference. A toilet may not be a conventional present, but for the 2.5 billion people without access to anywhere safe or hygienic to go to the toilet, it's literally a life-saver, and a way out of poverty. Please visit www.wateraid.org/shopforlife and help WaterAid continue its vital work."

For more information contact please contact Lisa Martin on +44(0)20 7793 4524, or email lisamartin@wateraid.org 

Note to editors:

Listen to an interview with Ada Oko-Williams, WaterAid's West African Sanitation Coordinator ( MP3 10.7MB)

• At least 5,000 children die every day as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.
• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world's population.
• 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, this is almost two fifths of the world's population.
• WaterAid projects providing safe water, sanitation and hygiene education cost just £15 per head.