2.6 billion people live without toilets!

A whopping 2.6 billion people across the world don't have access to toilets.

"It is really shocking to note that 2.6 billion people don't have toilets in their houses," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International.

At the inauguration of the first training and rehabilitation centre for scavengers in Patna, Pathak told rediff.com that 'toilet-less' people account for 40 percent of the world's total population.

Pathak said that most people without access to toilets live in Asia, Africa and the Latin American countries, which lack basic sanitation facilities.

In India, over 700 million households don't have proper toilets or waste disposal systems.

Concerned about this scenario, the United Nations has highlighted the lack of toilets as one of its priorities in the millennium development goals. The UN's target is to provide toilets to half of them by 2015 and to the remaining half by 2025.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/apr/05toilet.htm