Following a series of disease outbreaks across the world, developing countries which still have some pockets of poverty with low implementation of sanitation, have adopted measures to boost the health quality of their people to create resilience on possible similar attack and other infectious diseases.  With better environmental condition, it is expected that the countries can also reduce huge financial loss they suffering due to poor sanitation, which can hamper their efforts to build infrastructure to attract much-needed foreign investment. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), bird flu (H5N1) and swine flu (H1N1), are among the outbreaks have been faced by the countries in the globe, particularly the developing countries.

Besides, water-related diseases such as diarrhea and skin disease also pose threat should the people exercise unhealthy way of life.  With relatively low income per capita and foreign direct investment, developing countries usually have limited budget for development. Five countries in East Asia, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, have suffered about 9 billion U.S. dollars per year due to poor sanitation, according to the World Bank. Besides, should the level of attack of a disease develop into the category of outbreak, the countries must also spend big funds to handle it. Although the attacks of the bird flu and swine flu have been declined recently, no country has been declared free from the disease so far.

One of the best solution is to step up sanitation and hygiene way of life, which has been stipulated as a target of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). With lower spending on health, more funds can be allocated to build infrastructure to boost economic growth and its efficiency amid the implementation of some free trades. With the huge global capital inflow into emerging markets amid the global economic recovery, the developing countries may have more opportunity to boost its own funds allocated on sanitation program. In Indonesia and Laos for instance, the governments have called the people to implement healthy way of life and keep clean environment.

Similar thing has also been carried out in other developing countries in the globe, where the governments in cooperation with the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Programmed have promoted efforts to boost sanitation to their people. In Indonesia, the government cooperating with the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Programmed in East Asia and the Pacific (WSP- EAP) has carried out some pilot projects in several villages to encourage villagers to improve sanitation and hygiene.

Similarly in Laos, the country has boosted implementation of sanitation to trim its 193 million U.S. dollars financial loss it suffers annually due to poor sanitation, according to press release from the World Bank received by Xinhua on Wednesday. In Kandone village, the poorest village in Sekong province of the country, the authorities declared the first-ever open defecation free (ODF) of the village in the province on Tuesday, marking the implementation of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in the country, it said. The pilot project was led by district officers of the National Centre for Environmental Health and Water Supply, under the Department of Hygiene of the Ministry of Health with technical support from WSP, it said.

It is expected that the remaining five villages in the pilot area will be declared ODF by June 2010, the release said. As a community-driven approach to improve sanitation behaviour among villages in developing countries, CLTS represents a strategic shift in focus from supporting toilet construction for individual households to one that seeks to create ODF villages through behavioural changes in the entire community.

"CLTS is a simple but effective strategy to empower communities in taking a decisive step towards achieving something on their own to be proud of. It motivates communities to take collective action in partnership with local governments, development organizations, and civil society organizations," said Almud Weitz, WSP-EAP Regional Team Leader as well as representatives of UNICEF, Care International, and other NGOs in the release.

According to the World Health Organization, H5N1 has killed more than 290 people across the world since 2003. In Indonesia, the virus has killed 136 people out of 164 cases, the country's Health Ministry has said. For H1N1, the virus has killed more than 25,000 people across the globe, and it was declared pandemic last year. The virus has killed 8 people out of 1,055 infected persons.

Source: Xinhua News Agency JAKARTA, May 19 (Xinhua)