FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Canadian coalition unveils provocative posters to highlight global sanitation and water crisis

To mark this year's upcoming World Toilet Day (Wednesday, November 19, 2008), a coalition of Canadian organizations concerned about the global sanitation and water crisis unveil two new hard-hitting posters to raise Canadians' awareness to the fact that 2.5 billion people presently live without access to basic sanitation, while nearly one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.

The first poster entitled Millions of women have to do it with an
audience highlights the shocking reality that many women and girls throughout
the developing world are forced to wait until it gets dark to relieve
themselves in fields and bushes because they have no alternative. In addition
to the indignity and health hazard of this practice, individuals are made
vulnerable to the threat of harassment and rape.

The second poster entitled Dirty water kills highlights the fact that for
the hundreds of millions of people living in the developing world who continue
to rely on unsafe sources of drinking water, death will result for many as
surely as a prisoner facing a firing squad.

The posters will be used to help launch a new campaign "Join the Call.
Toilets for All!". SWAN is looking for public support in demanding that Canada
and world leaders honour their commitments to address the water and sanitation
crisis.

No toilets mean no separation of human waste from daily life. This lack
of toilets forces millions of people to relieve themselves in streets, fields,
and water sources; in crowded slums residents resort to the use of "flying
toilets" - plastic bags full of human waste that litter neighbourhoods and
threaten people's health.

More than 5,000 children die each day from preventable diseases caused by
poor sanitation and dirty water - that's the equivalent of 20 airliners
crashing without notice day after day.

According to Mr. George Yap, Coordinator for SWAN Canada "...many primary
schools in rural Africa have 200 or more students sharing a single filthy
toilet, assuming of course the school has such a facility. The lack of
sanitation and water facilities discourages students, especially girls, from
attending classes and makes both learning by students and teaching by teachers
difficult." Adds Mr. Yap, "...investing in sanitation is a cost-effective way
to help tackle global poverty."

Currently, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) invests
about $70 million in the water and sanitation sector each year; this
represents a mere two per cent of CIDA's total annual expenditures. The
members of SWAN call on the Canadian government to make clean water and basic
sanitation a foreign aid priority, and to demonstrate international leadership
on this vital issue.

The new SWAN posters can also be downloaded at
www.swancanada.org/english/resources.html

Sanitation & Water Action Network (SWAN) Canada is a coalition of
Canadian organizations united in the belief that sanitation and water
initiatives must be a foreign aid priority for Canada.

Through SWAN Canada, like-minded groups are able to come together with
one voice to engage citizens and government on the critical importance of
sanitation and water in the fight against global poverty.

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