Heed the call of students for safe drinking water, hygienic toilets

The number of children lacking access to safe drinking water, toilets and handwashing facilities in schools ranges from 500 million to 900 million across the world, says a joint study by the UN Children's Fund and the World Health Organization. The stark findings in the first ever global assessment of water and sanitation in schools should set alarm bells ringing for authorities and educators.

More than 30 percent of schools worldwide do not provide safe drinking water for about 570 million children. At least 620 million children lack basic sanitation facilities - or improved single-sex facilities usable at the time of the survey - in their schools. And nearly half of the schools worldwide lacked proper handwashing facilities which are essential for disease prevention, said the assessment report released on Monday.

To be more specific, at least one in three primary schools and a quarter of the secondary schools didn't have proper hygienic conditions, affecting nearly 900 million children, according to the "Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in schools, Global Baseline Report 2018".