Access to Sanitation

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jim Dobbin

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) on choosing this subject for the debate. I should also like to thank the Minister, who I am sure has okayed my contribution this evening.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

Of course.

[Jim Dobbin]

I speak as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on child health and vaccine preventable diseases. The other co-chair is Lord Avebury. I tabled an early-day motion recently on this subject, and it now has quite a number of signatures. I am also vice-chairman of the Council of Europe public health committee.

Diarrhoea is the most common cause of childhood illness and kills about 760,000 children each year. Around 90% of those deaths are caused by a lack of access to safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene. Those deaths are preventable. Vaccines against rotavirus, the most common and severe diarrhoea in children, are critical, and their availability is a major development in public health. However, those vaccines should not be seen as a silver bullet for tackling diarrhoea; nor can they address the other health impacts of a lack of sanitation.

Reducing deaths from the top killers of children requires the prioritisation of interventions across different sectors, including health, nutrition, hygiene, water and sanitation. We must apply the package of prevention and treatment solutions that we know to be effective, and this must be built on solid collaboration between health systems and the water and sanitation sector.

This was reinforced last year when I visited health care facilities in Bangladesh and Kenya, where we were launching a programme of vaccination. I witnessed extremely successful vaccination programmes in both countries, which were helping to protect children against terrible diseases such as pneumonia. During my visit, however, I was struck by the poor levels of basic sanitation and access to clean water at many of the health care facilities we visited. This emphasised to me how important it is to ensure that preventive measures such as vaccines are coupled with improvements in sanitation and access to clean water.

I also saw on these visits small wards packed with up to 25 children, with the mothers in the same ward. I saw three babies in one incubator, and I saw a single oxygen cylinder with five or six lines coming out of it. It is all the basic stuff that is missing there. The vaccination was great—it is absolutely superb—and the efforts of the medics and nursing staff in each of these hospitals was just brilliant. The common basic hygiene and sanitation, however, are just not there.

It so happens that I will be in Geneva tomorrow with the Earl of Dundee, who is the chairman of my Council of Europe committee. We are going to be in discussions with the World Health Organisation, UNESCO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation. The issue of sanitation is one that we want to raise, because this is a global problem that needs to be tackled globally. I wanted to make only a short contribution; I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response.