Uganda’s economy loses an estimate of 177 million U.S. dollars, 1.1 percent of GDP, annually due to poor sanitation, a new World Bank report released on Tuesday has said.
According to the desk study, Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa – Uganda, the majority (84 percent) of these costs come from the annual premature death of 23,000 Ugandans from diarrheal disease, including 19,700 children under the age of five, nearly 90 percent of which is directly attributable to poor water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Health-related costs accounted for 12 percent of the total economic costs, while access time and productivity losses accounted for about 4.1 percent.
“We’ve known for some time about the impact of poor sanitation on health, but this is one of the first studies to quantify the annual costs incurred because of poor sanitation,” said Yolande Coombes, senior water and sanitation specialist with the Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.
“Uganda will not be able to grow sustainably without addressing these costs,” the official added.
The study also found that 13.8 million Ugandans use unsanitary or shared latrines, 3.2 million have no latrine at all and defecate in the open, and that the poorest quintile is 13.5 times more likely to practice open defecation than the richest.
Overall in the 18 African countries studied, the report says they lose about 5.5 billion dollars, 1-2.5 percent of GDP, annually due to poor sanitation.
The countries account for 448 million people, which is almost half of Africa’s population.
“The true cost could be much higher: these analyses only deals with losses due to premature deaths, healthcare costs, losses in productivity, and time lost through the practice of open defecation,” the report said, noting that the impact of inadequate sanitation on costs of epidemic outbreaks, losses in trade and tourism revenues may be difficult and expensive to estimate.