According to the report, made public on Friday, only 26 percent households have toilets, while a majority of people excrete out in the open. Of the total 591,077 households, only 153,117 households have toilets. Last year alone, around 400 villagers had lost their lives to cholera epidemic in the mid western region. [break]
Kalikot has the lowest number of toilets. Of the total 16,725 households, only nine percent have toilets.
Jumla has the highest number of toilets. Over 35 percent households in Jumla have toilets. Even Surkhet is backward in terms of having toilet facilities. Only 66 percent of households in Surkhet have toilets.
Prem Krishna Shrestha, divisional engineer at DWSS, points out sanitation as a major problem facing the mid west. According to Shrestha, only 27 percent households in the mid western region have access to pure drinking water. “We are aiming to provide toilet and sanitation facility to all households by 2015,” he says.
Sociologist Kamal Adhikari says that the country has been incurring a loss of Rs 10 billion every year due to epidemic outbreaks caused by lack of sanitation. “We can save this money by making people aware of sanitation,” he says.
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