title: Shared sanitation: to include or to exclude?
abstract: Just over 600 million people used shared sanitation in 2015, but this form of sanitation is not considered 'improved sanitation' or, in the current terminology, 'basic sanitation' by WHO/UNICEF, principally because they are typically unhygienic. Recent research has shown that neighbour-shared toilets perform much better than large communal toilets. The successful development of community-designed, built and managed sanitation-and-water blocks in very poor urban areas in India should be adapted and adopted throughout urban slums in developing countries, with a caretaker employed to keep the facilities clean. Such shared sanitation should be classified as 'basic', sometimes as 'safely-managed', sanitation, so contributing to the achievement of the sanitation target of the Sustainable Development Goals.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Public Health and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK d.d.mara@leeds.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Duncan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mara
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003906:Developing Countries; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D006920:Hygiene; D007194:India; D011204:Poverty Areas; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012499:Sanitation / Q000379:methods*; D014038:Toilet Facilities; D014505:Urban Population
keywords: Basic sanitation; Cleanliness; Community management; Faeco-oral disease; Shared sanitation; Urban slums