On World Plumbing Day, thank a plumber, the first public health servant

My father once told me that plumbers were the original health care professionals. Growing up, I never thought much about the feeling. Most of the time, as a kid, I’d just heard a lot of jokes from plumbers, and our family’s vacation photos featured unique toilets that my father came across on our travels. This is because sanitary is our family business – in the truest sense of the word.

He and all of his brothers are plumbers, as are their father and uncle. Many of my cousins ​​have worked for the family business at some point. Yet even as I pursued a degree in global health, I never stopped to ponder the long-term health implications of her work.

Therefore, I will never forget the look on my father’s face when I told him I had been hired to draw attention to a newly discovered, massive gap in health care – the lack of clean water and sanitation as well as the Improving hygiene in thousands of hospitals in developing countries in ten years.

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He was absolutely horrified. How could that still be the case? The technology, skills, and even building codes had existed for years. The unique effectiveness of clean water, toilets, and soap in preventing the spread of disease is clear.

Plumbing, plumbing are older than you think

The earliest examples of sanitary facilities date back 5,000 years on the Orkney Islands, Scotland. From Babylonia to Egypt, from China to Greece, civilizations have understood the fundamental importance of human hygiene, and complex infrastructures are still monuments to it. Rome’s famous aqueducts distributed collected water through lead pipes, while the Cloaca Maxima sewage system was connected throughout the city (parts of it are still functional 2000 years later!).

The main lesson, however, might be this: The fall of Rome led to the demise of civilization, including the emphasis on good hygiene, which was eventually replaced by the theory that “miasma” or bad air is responsible for disease. Waterborne diseases, for example, plagued the population, including Europeans, who arrived on the shores of the New World.

A typhus outbreak is suspected in the decline of the Jamestown settlement in the 17th century. An estimated 80,000 soldiers died of typhus or dysentery during the civil war. Thousands died during the waves of cholera that emerged in the mid-19th century; It traveled across the country from New York City to the Oregon Trail.

What has changed? The advent of the plumbing that enabled people to use a toilet, flush trash, and wash their hands. The sewage system took away waste, treated it and ensured that clean drinking water came out when the tap was turned on.

Sanitary was the solution to a new scientific understanding of disease transmission. If you think back to high school biology, you might remember the awkwardly named “fecal-oral route”. That’s exactly how it sounds. Feces are laden with pathogens that can be spread from one person’s intestines to another person through contaminated water, hands, or food, and that person can develop dozens of diseases, some of which are very serious. In the simplest sense, hygiene is a critical barrier that prevents feces from getting into your mouth.

Our health depends on clean water

Hygiene and clean water are some of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century and, along with vaccination, are the best innovations for combating infectious diseases. The implications can hardly be overstated, and we expect the convenience and safety of this basic condition. Unfortunately, those in places like Flint, Michigan, Compton, California, and Appalachia have learned hard lessons. During the height of the Flint crisis, plumbers volunteered to install water filters to purify the water for residents.

When I moved to Cambodia to work at Emory University’s School of Public Health and the WaterAid nonprofit group on water, sanitation and hygiene, I realized the importance of plumbing. Not only are many developing countries lacking adequately trained plumbers, but I was now faced with realities I had just explored: The impact of 4.5 billion people around the world living without improved sanitation on keeping their poop safe Manage, of 2.1 billion people worldwide who still live without access to a safely managed water source to ensure they don’t get sick while drinking.

UNICEF reports that more than 1,300 children die from diarrhea alone every day.

My job shouldn’t have to exist. Yet here I am working to increase the vitality of providing sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene in healthcare facilities around the world, the front line of disease prevention and control for all of us.

On Monday I wish my father a happy World Installation Day, which opened a decade ago. You could say it was 5,000 years ago.

After 35 years at the helm, my father retired with little fanfare. I take pride in continuing the proverbial key to my public health career handed down before him by my father and grandfather. My relatives may be used to the jokes and ingratitude of the job, but they also recognize the role they play in maintaining public safety. I look forward to more governments, non-governmental organizations, and the general public to better understand the fundamental importance of sanitation in maintaining global health. And on the way to recognizing the plumber’s legacy as a public health protector.

Lindsay Denny, a senior public health program officer at the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Emory University, is the Health Advisor for Global Water 2020.

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