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Hundreds run for clean toilets in southern Vietnam

TUOI TRE NEWS
UPDATED : 12/26/2016 21:02 GMT + 7

Hundreds of young Vietnamese people and students on Sunday joined a run to raise awareness of sanitary restrooms.

The Urgent Run at the Center for Culture and Cinematography in Binh Duong Province was part of the global Urgent Run organized by the World Toilet Organization, a non-profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide.

Initiated in 2013, the global Urgent Run is a call for urgent action to end the sanitation crisis, aiming to bring communities around the world together, as well as raising awareness for the global sanitation challenge and engaging people with sanitation issues in their local communities, according to its website.

According to Le Van Hiep, head of the World Toilet in Vietnam, around 2.5 billion people across the globe do not have access to sanitary toilets.

Insanitary toilets and toilet shortage are among the causes leading to diarrhea that kills 800,000 children a year, Hiep added.

Specifically, around 1,000 children died per day from diarrhea diseases due to poor sanitation in 2013 and these deaths are preventable, the World Toilet asserted.

The World Toilet is collaborating with the government and enterprises of Vietnam, which still sees a large number of insanitary and makeshift toilets, to build up programs for sanitary toilets.

The programs are meant to research modern technology and build environment-friendly toilets in public places such as schools and hospitals.

Binh Duong is the first place in Vietnam where sanitary toilets are constructed with funds sourced from the private sector.