Environmental sanitation: An ignored issue in India

40 Dear sir, In general, environmental sanitation covers arrangements for drainage of rainwater and effluents, collection and disposal of garbage and removal of human excreta. The World Health organization (WHO) defines environmental sanitation as “the control of all those factors in man’s physical environment, which exercise or may exercise a deleterious effect on his physical development, health and survival.”[1] The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is also insuring the environmental sustainability. Important indicators of the Millennium Development Goals are to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and to achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.[2]