Progress Toward Rural Sanitation Goal Slow
Cambodia’s progress has been slow toward achieving the UN Millennium Development Goal of increasing rural access to sanitation to 30 percent by 2015, up from 8.6 percent in 1996, the World Bank said in a report released Wednesday. The World Bank report said that rural villages that invest in toilets can make savings of more than double their initial cost through improving sanitary conditions and avoiding spending money on medical costs resulting from poor sanitation. According to a separate report released in 2008 by the World Health Organization and Unicef, 77 percent of rural Cambodians are unable to access bathroom facilities.
