To halve the proportion of people without improved sanitation, global coverage needs to grow to 75 per cent by 2015, from a starting point of 49 per cent in 1990. However, if the 1990-2002 trend continues, the world will miss the sanitation target by more than half a billion people. In other words, close to 2.4 billion people will be without improved sanitation in 2015, almost as many as there are today.
The situation is most serious in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, Eurasia and Oceania, none of which are on track for meeting the sanitation target.
Despite disappointing progress overall, a number of regions have made tremendous gains. Eastern Asia’s coverage, for example, has almost doubled since 1990. Similarly, South Asia managed to move from 20 per cent to 37 per cent coverage, although it started with the lowest baseline of any region.
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