You wouldn’t think that Pinoys who own modern cell phones and i-pods would still use the banks of the Pasig River in Quiapo, Manila as a latrine. But they do.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III revealed yesterday that around 5.6 million Filipino households still do not have their own toilet facilities, leaving them prone to health hazards and illnesses like diarrhea.
"Diarrhea has the most significant impact on health of poor sanitation and hygiene and has long been a major public health problem in the country," he told a press briefing during the Philippine Sanitation Summit 2006 yesterday.
Duque claimed that while the morbidity rate of diarrhea went down from 1,352 per 100,000 cases in 1995 to only 722 in 2004, diarrhea remains among the top leading causes of illness among Filipinos.
Duque, along with Environment Secretary Angelo Reyes and Misamis Oriental Rep. Augusto Baculio who authored the Clean Water Act, signed the "Manila Declaration on the Advancement of Sustainable Sanitation and Wastewater Management in the Philippines" during the summit.
The declaration seeks to effect related programs and work to achieve the goal of the Millennium Development Goal to "reduce by 50 percent by 2015 the number of people without sustainable access to drinking water and sanitation."
It calls for renewed efforts to improve access "to hygiene and sanitation services in order to achieve national MDG targets and to share the health and developmental benefits more widely across communities."
The declaration also calls for development and funding of the National Sewerage and Septage Management Program, and lasting investment programs for the sector; and acceleration of the implementation of the Clean Water Act of 2004, including the organization of Water Quality Management Areas and establishment of the Water Quality Management Fund, among others projects.
Baculio said the country’s commitment in improving sanitation and Waste Water management is articulated in the Philippine Sanitation Code, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Health Action Plan and in the Rio Declaration on Sustainable Development.
However, Baculio said their efforts to improve sanitation and waste water management are hindered by infrastructures that were put up before such laws took effect.
Under the Clean Water Act, in particular, establishments are required to have a sanitation facility that separates the urine from feces.
"That’s one of the biggest challenge now. How can the existing establishments comply. This really needs the commitment of various sectors," Baculio added.
Meanwhile, National Water Resources Board (NWRB) executive director Ramon Alikpala yesterday said that meeting the country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 might not be possible unless the government address sanitation and water concerns ahead of the deadline.
Alikpala, who was at yesterday’s sanitation summit explained that achieving the targets set under the MDGs are mostly dependent on the response of the government and non-government organizations to improve clean water and sanitation accessibility in the country.
"How can we address poverty and health issues when our water is not clean because majority, if not all, of the people have no access to proper sanitation?" Alikpala argued.
"We have to consider that to be able to have a sustainable supply of clean water we should not only make sure that we produce clean water, we must also consider that waste water is properly treated," he added.
Alikpala stressed that water is crucial in achieving the MDG target because illnesses or diseases are caused by the absence or lack of proper sanitation and unclean water.
He likewise cited the perception of people who would rather pay for clean water than waste water as a hindrance to addressing sanitation problems.
"People think that it is reasonable to pay for clean water, but unreasonable to pay for waste water," Alikpala said.
He said that investment to sanitation is two to three times higher than investment to clean water.
"Also, it’s not really so much about, for example, cleaning up the polluted Pasig River, but (about) preventing the people from dumping into the Pasig River," Alikpala added. "It’s the attitude of the people towards sanitation."
Earlier, the World Bank (WB) said that the Philippines’ poor sanitation and sewerage is alarming, owing to the underinvestment of the sector and ineffective implementation of existing laws that would supposedly address the sanitation and sewerage problem of the country.
Ben Eijbergen, Infrastructure Sector Coordinator of the WB Office in Manila, in his report titled The Forgotten Sector: Sanitation and Sewerage in the Philippines, said that Manila ranks third-worst among 18 selected Asian cities in terms of sewerage access since only about 4 percent of the population had access to sewerage in 2000 while access to sewerage network was almost non-existent outside Metro Manila.
Manila is preceded by Vientiane and Jakarta while Hong Kong and Osaka were recorded to have 100 percent sewerage access.
Meanwhile, other signatories to the Manila Declaration were the Departments of Public Works and Highways, Education, Health and Nutrition; National Economic and Development Authority; Local Water Utilities Administration; Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System; Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines; and NWRB.
Meanwhile, a World Bank study in 2005 said major efforts will be needed in the Philippines to achieve the MDG of increasing formal access to water supply to 90 percent by 2010.
For sanitation and solid waste, however, the same study noted that "matters are even worse."
It said that of the vast majority of households with septic tanks, only about 3 percent in mostly rural on-site treatment and disposal facilities were acceptable.
Moreover, the WB study said that solid waste collection in the country is ineffective, and that large quantities of such waste often accumulate and block drainage canals, exacerbating public health problems.
As a result, the WB study said, contaminated drinking water and waterborne diseases remain a prevalent public health concern, accounting to over 500,000 morbidity and 4,200 mortality cases in the country each year.
Eijbergen said that approximately 31 percent of illnesses monitored in 1996 to 2000 were attributed to waterborne sources, which translates to a P3.3-billion avoidable health cost per year.
Health centers all over the country record a total of 2,000 cases of diarrhea and 25 deaths caused by poor sanitation almost everyday.
Health Undersecretary Ethelyn Nieto previously said that diarrhea is the second cause of morbidity in the country, as intestinal parasitism and malnutrition similarly account for deaths among Filipinos.
Government information indicated that in rural areas, almost 40 percent of households do not have access to sanitation facilities while between 50 to 60 percent of households and establishments have "extremely low" sanitation coverage in over 10 primary cities nationwide.
Sewerage and wastewater management in cities are considered "even worse" because of the 115 cities, only nine have collection systems, each serving less than 10 percent of the city, the government data added. — With Katherine Adraneda