A loan officer who worked for a bank in Japan always found that the loans he granted were successfully paid on time. When he retired, he shared his secret. He granted loans only to women and, before making the final decision on the loan, he made sure he visited the home of the applicant to have a look at the state of their toilet, wardrobe, and kitchen. He had a rule that, if they were unclean or untidy, he would not approve the loan.
The restroom (toilet) of a home or an office is a mirror that accurately indicates the culture, hygiene, state of affairs, and capabilities of the owner. It is time for every Mongolian to look at themselves, their neighborhood, and their country in this mirror, assess the living environment and take measures for improvement.
The central government and the majority of local governments have always avoided discussing the issue around toilets, let alone resolving it. As they ignored the issue and pretended that they were not aware of it for many years, the general state of health in our society requires us to trigger the alarm.
One half of the three million strong population of Mongolia resides in Ulaanbaatar whereas five percent live in Darkhan-Uul province and three percent in Orkhon province. More than half of those people live in ger districts. One third of the remaining population of 1.2 million resides in province and soum centers while approximately 750,000 people live in the countryside herding livestock and changing locations to seek for better pastureland.
Depending on the location of residence, 45 percent of our total population use pit latrines by digging a hole in the ground and building a small shelter, either made of wood or covered by sack. Around 65 percent of population consumes water and food that are sanitized.
A United Nations report suggest that the thousands of new apartment blocks built in Mongolia’s urban areas in the first 15 years of this millennia have caused only a three percent drop in the number of people who use pit latrines. I previously mentioned in my article titled ‘Potemkin villages’ that Mongolia is behind North Korea on the access to improved sanitation facilities (flush toilets).
Every Mongolian is aware that wooden toilets (pit latrines) reflect the culture of livelihood, and wishes to make change. However, no one is discussing how to solve this problem. Without using fancy terms such as restrooms or facilities, we need to bring this issue to light, talk about wooden toilets, how they impact the life of an individual as well as broader society, and hold a discussion about fixing the problem.
PRESSURE POINT IN PUBLIC HEALTH
Besides the air and water quality, the hygiene of toilets used by the majority of the population is a key factor in the public health of a developing country. The wooden toilets that are used by the majority of Mongolia’s population as well as the toilets in schools and kindergartens are producing negative impacts on public health and the health of our younger generations.
Are we going to do nothing and watch our children hold it in, because they do not want to go outside to an unsanitary wooden toilet in the cold winter and catch infectious diseases?
Wooden toilets allow flies to carry stomach disease bacteria into food. One of those bacteria is E. coli. If children get this bacterium, they will have to be treated at a hospital. However, it becomes recurrent unless the living environment is changed. As soon as the bacteria get into the stomach and intestines of a child, it changes the immunity reaction and develops a stomach disease.
The disease can lead to intestinal atrophy, which compromises the ability to get nutrition from food. It reduces the growth of a child. Due to heavy rain and floods, human faeces contained in wooden toilets rises to the surface and dries up, allowing bacteria to get in the air and transmit diseases.
We need to put an end to using wooden toilets and replace the health and sanitation infrastructure. Until then people should change their behaviours. The risk of catching a disease from bacteria would significantly reduce if everyone frequently washed their hands.
The local health institutions such as soum and district hospitals need to take action to raise awareness on the bacteria in wooden toilets and the benefits of washing hands frequently. It is obvious that preventing disease is much cheaper than seeking treatment after becoming ill.
THE KHUVSGUL EXPERIMENT
Khuvsgul, the province that has the biggest population, has started some initiatives to improve the conditions of toilets used by children. Even though 70 percent of children go to kindergarten, the capacity of buildings is low. One kindergarten class in Murun town, the province centre, has 30-40 children, which is twice as many as the number given by the ministry. Most of the kindergartens of Khuvsgul’s 24 soums have wooden toilets outside the building. A winter in Khuvsgul can get as cold as -400C degrees, so it has significant impact on the health and comfort of small children.
Tunel has a population of 3,800 and its only kindergarten has 175 children. During the summer, they operate a mobile kindergarten to accommodate for children living in the countryside in remote baghs. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) gave an air conditioner and an improved wooden toilet to the kindergarten.
Also, UNICEF installed modern toilets and showers in a freight container to male and female dormitories of Tunel’s high school.
UNICEF is implementing an experimental project to replace wooden toilets in the Khuvsgul province and aims to extend it to other provinces. They built 26 improved toilets, each of which cost approximately 25 million MNT, in school dormitories and kindergartens in 12 soums, 13 container toilets (60 million MNT each), and 8 modern toilets. They had to dig a well in six soums.
The project costs 1.2 billion MNT in total. Local governments and teachers have been talking about how the project is bringing a significant improvement in the living and learning environment of the children who used to go outside in the dark, cold winter to go to the toilet.
The province government is also working together with UNICEF, and has been allocating funding from their local development fund to improve the toilets in other soums and in Khatgal village.
In the mid-19th century England had the Great Stink caused by the untreated human waste in the River Thames. London solved the problem by gradually replacing the city infrastructure. It helped the average life expectancy increase by ten years and changed the behaviors of city dwellers. Similarly, building low cost improved toilets will influence public health positively while working on a more long term option to replace the whole ger district with apartment blocks.
Wooden toilets today are causing children to catch diseases and restricting them from growing healthy. In order to improve the wooden toilets to meet the needs of today, it is time to launch a ‘modern toilet infiltration’ to improve public health similar to the ‘cultural infiltration’ that happened 50 years ago.
2015.10.28