Sanitation it's the set of measures adopted in a region, in a city, to improve the lives and health of the inhabitants, preventing physical factors with harmful effects from harming people's physical, mental and social well-being.
Drinking water supply, sanitary sewage, urban cleaning, solid waste management and drainage of rainwater is the set of infrastructure services and operational facilities that will improve the life of the community. It is important for government officials to ensure the well-being and health of the population, as long as measures are also taken to educate the community on environmental conservation.
Basic sanitation in Brazil
One of the most serious problems in the large peripheries of Brazil is precisely the lack of basic sanitation and this is one of the most important factors in health because, depending on the environment where they live, they can contract and transmit many diseases, including, for example, respiratory diseases, worms and so on. others. Therefore, access to clean water and some hygiene conditions, many diseases can be avoided, thus reducing the cost of treatments.
Investment in basic sanitation is crucial in society, since every R$1 invested in sanitation equivalent to savings of R$ 4 in the health area, because basic sanitation represents measures of prevention.
Furthermore, another important factor in basic sanitation is its capacity to create work. In 2010, this sector created 64 thousand jobs, which means a total of 671,000 jobs created directly or indirectly by the basic sanitation sector.
According to figures from the 2010 National Sanitation Information System (SNIS), released in June 2012, the distribution of drinking water reaches 81.1% of the population. Regarding sewage collection, it reaches 46.2% of Brazilians.
In 2004, according to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization, in Brazil alone there were 13 million people who did not have access to a bathroom.
Basic sanitation and health
The World Health Organization defines basic sanitation as "the control of all environmental factors of man who exert or may have a deleterious effect on his physical, mental or Social". Basic sanitation has as its main objective to ensure the health of human beings, taking into account that many diseases can develop when there is poor sanitation. Thus, the prevention measures that aim to promote human health are as follows:
- Water supply;
- Maintenance of sewage systems;
- Collection, removal and final disposal of garbage;
- Rainwater drainage;
- Insect and rodent control;
- Sanitation of food;
- Control of environmental pollution;
- Sanitation of housing, workplaces and recreation;
- Sanitation applied to territorial planning.
