WHO Likely To Hail Modi’s Swachh Bharat For Averting Three Lakh Deaths, Increasing Toilet Coverage To 89 Per Cent

In a report that it will release later today, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is likely hail Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Mission for what it has achieved in the last four years, a report in The Economic Times said.

According to the report, the United Nations agency will highlight that the Swachh Bharat Mission has prevented over three lakh deaths related to diarrhoea and protein-energy malnutrition since 2014. It may attribute this to the increase in toilet coverage in the country from 45 per cent in 2014 to nearly 90 per cent presently and the construction of over eight crore toilets, which has resulted in decrease in open-defecation.

Diarrhoea has a direct link to open defecation. As this Times of India report points out, cases of diarrhoea among children living in non-open defecation free (ODF) villages are 46 per cent higher in comparison to ODF ones.

To prepare the report, the international health agency has studied the impact of Swachh Bharat Mission in rural areas in detail.

WHO’s report may also point out that over 199 million cases of diarrhoea were reported annually before the start of the mission in 2014. It may add that the mission has helped in avoiding 14 million Disability-Adjusted Life Years, which the WHO defines as “the sum of years of potential life lost due to premature mortality and the years of productive life lost due to disability.”