Nasuapum’s Victory

Around the world, open defecation is rapidly disappearing. According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, the global rate has fallen from 21% in 2000 to just 4% in 2024. But Papua New Guinea is among the very few countries where the practice is instead increasing, with more than 1,600,000 people practicing open defecation today (16% of the population), which is over 900,000 more people than at the turn of the century.

The consequences are severe. Open defecation contaminates the environment and spreads deadly diseases like diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Diarrheal diseases are among the top three killers of children under five in Papua New Guinea, with thousands of preventable deaths each year. Poor sanitation also contributes to stunting, which affects the physical and mental development of over half a million children under 5 in Papua New Guinea.

The economic cost of poor sanitation in Papua New Guinea is staggering. The country forfeits an estimated US$734 million every year because of ill health and early death linked to inadequate sanitation – around 3 per cent of the nation’s GDP.

And with climate change increasing the intensity and frequency of flooding in many communities, the risk of disease spreading is dramatically higher.  

Yet amid these challenges, local innovation is pointing the way forward.

In Nasuapum, Huon Gulf District in Morobe Province, parents Solomon and Jill are part of a community transformation. For generations, their community practiced open defecation, leading to high rates of disease – a situation made worse each year as climate change causes water levels to rise and floods to intensify. 

This year, through support and training from Care International and UNICEF, funded by KOICA, the community initiated an innovative, climate-resilient toilet design dubbed the “Nasuapum model toilet” – a ventilated improved pit toilet (VIP) with a raised, reinforced pit plastered with mud compacted between two layers of timber. Built using local or permanent materials, its design prevents seepage of fecal matter into the surrounding environment and keeps floodwaters out.

“I built this toilet purposely for hygiene reasons - to prevent flies from bringing feces to my family and making us sick,” Mr. Solomon said. “I built it three weeks ago through my own motivation and training from Care International”.

Today, all 36 households in the Nasuapum community have a toilet, and the community was officially certified as Open Defecation Free on World Toilet Day 2025 – proof of the power of community action. 

Now, Solomon and Jill’s children, along with the other children of Nasuapumcan, live in a healthy environment without fear of becoming sick from fecal contamination of food or water.

The “Nasuapum model toilet” will now be monitored by the community and relevant district and provincial authorities to assess its performance and potential for scale-up across the district, province and country. If successful, it could serve as a blueprint for climate-resilient sanitation solutions throughout Papua New Guinea.

Access to a toilet – at home, in schools, in health centres, and in markets – is a basic human right with transformational benefits on the quality of life, equity and dignity for all people. And yet, while the world moves closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating open defecation by 2030, Papua New Guinea risks being left behind unless efforts are accelerated, communities are supported, and sanitation is prioritised as a foundation of health, dignity, equity and national development.

On World Toilet Day, now is the time to come together to close the sanitation gap and protect our children and our communities.