1.9 pct of EU population has no sanitary facilities

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - People living in the European Union in households without basic sanitary facilities, such as bath, shower and indoor flushing toilets represented 1.9 percent of the total population in 2016, Eurostat said on Thursday.

The report showed that Romania (30 percent), Lithuania (12 percent) and Latvia (11.7 percent) had the highest share of population with limited access to basic hygiene in 2016.

Malta and Germany topped the list of countries that fully provided basic sanitary requirements followed by Belgium, Italy and Netherlands with 0.1 percent and Austria, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia with 0.2 percent of the population.

In Turkey, 1.8 percent had no access to basic sanitary facilities in 2015.

Around 2.3 billion people worldwide had no basic sanitation facilities such as toilets or latrines in 2015, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Poor sanitation is a major cause of several diseases, which mostly occur in countries with high mortality patterns, such as in Africa and South-East Asia.

Inadequate sanitation and unsafe water is estimated to cause 280,000 diarrheal deaths annually and is a major factor in several diseases, the WHO revealed.

Every year, some 842,000 people in countries with low and middle income level die as they suffer from inadequate water, lack of sanitation and hygiene, it added.