One billion people still defecate in public despite health risks, says UN

One billion people still practice "open defecation", UN experts said at the launch of a study on drinking water and sanitation.

"'Excreta', 'faeces', 'poo' … this is the root cause of so many diseases," said Bruce Gordon, acting co-ordinator for sanitation and health at the World Health Organisation.

Societies that practice open defecation - putting them at risk from cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid - tend to have large income disparities and high numbers of deaths of children under five years old.

Attempts to improve sanitation have focused on building latrines, but the UN says money was wasted. Attitudes, not infrastructure, need to change, it said.

"In all honesty the results have been abysmal," said Rolf Luyendijk, a statistician at the UN's children's fund Unicef.

Many countries have made great progress in tackling open defecation, with Vietnam and Bangladesh virtually stamping out the practice entirely by 2012.

The global number has fallen from 1.3 billion in 1990. But one billion people "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy", the UN said.