The U.N. General Assembly has declared access to safe, clean drinking water and sanitation to be a "'human right' in a resolution that more than 40 countries including the United States didn't support. South Africa did support it.
Most of the sanitation technologies provided to informal settlements in Cape Town do not meet the standards of basic sanitation. This is either due to the higher household: toilet ratios, the technology itself, the condition and location of the sanitation infrastructure, or the way in which it is serviced.
Several stories plot the toilet saga in Khayelitsha including a timeline, the A to Z of toilet types and the questions sent to the mayor.
Diarrhoea, death, disability. Anso Thom uncovers the indignity of living without sanitation.
RR Section is flanked by Lansdowne Road and Mew Way, both major arteries through the sprawling township of Khayelitsha. Ramshackle shacks are tightly knit with eroded and sodden dirt roads and footpaths cutting between the homes with a massive uninhabitable marsh right in the middle.
With 87% of the world'€™s population or approximately 5.9 billion people using safe drinking-water sources, the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the new WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report titled: "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-Water '€“2010 Update Report," released today.
South Africa is sitting on a malnutrition time bomb '€“ which has seen people either being severely over- or underweight, top nutrition expert Professor Demetre Labadarios has warned.
While South Africa has made some progress towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), mental health and poverty remain major challenges, according to public hearings on the MDGs hosted by the SA Human Rights Commission.
The World Health Organisation has called for governments to require all tobacco packets to have pictures showing the dangers of tobacco use.
There are still no reports of the A/H1N1 swine influenza (swine flu) that has allegedly killed people in Mexico of reaching South African shores. The flu is believed to have claimed 152 lives in Mexico including 20 which have been confirmed to have resulted from the flu with over 50 cases now reported in the US.
Pia Engebrigtsen worked for 2 months as a nurse in Zimbabwe's Masvingo province during the country's cholera outbreak, in which MSF has so far treated more than 45,000 people. Here she shares her story of death, heartbreak, survival and saving lives against all odds.
Would you believe that world-wide, 2 in 5 people don't have access to safe sanitation!? Today in our series on EVERYDAY HEROES '€“ people who make a difference in their part of the world '€“ we visit a doctor and a nursery school principal who are playing their part to promote good hygiene.
It's been almost 15 years since we voted for all South Africans to have equal access to government services...to have dignity and a better life. To have treatment for life-threatening illnesses. But every now and then, as journalists, we step into corners of the country where apartheid and its indignities remains alive and well. Where the services that government has designed to improve our lives just CAN'T reach.
NIGERIA,(PlusNews) - Ijora Badia in Lagos, Nigeria's former capital city and the country's economic hub is a community virtually without government services.
Zimbabwe'€™s doctors have sketched a picture of a health system that has collapsed with hundreds of people dying from a cholera epidemic which has now crossed the border into South Africa.
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