The Central Railway has finally formulated a public toilet policy and invited proposals for comprehensive toilet services at every railway station across the city. The policy lays down specific guidelines, including hiring uniformed staff, cleanliness norms and even the toiletries to be used inside. All stations in the Mumbai division have been clubbed as clusters — each having a maximum of seven to eight stations under it — and the toilet location specified for every platform, to enable proper monitoring and follow-ups.

Civil Society Floods Situation Report on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Response in Sindh 2011 has disclosed that due to the poor intervention by the government and humanitarian agencies in rain and flood affected districts of Sindh increased health risks especially water borne and viral diseases among the affected communities, as 87 percent of water sources are unfit for drinking.

A couple of cases of Hepatitis B were reported from Palamel near Mavelikkara and isolated cases from neighbouring places in the district recently, according to the District Medical Officer (in-charge), Jacob Varghese.

Mr. Varghese was speaking at a meeting to discuss the action plan for prevention and control of communicable diseases here on Wednesday. Later speaking to The Hindu he said that the real cause of the disease in the area has not been ascertained yet.

The traders of Chungathara in the district are leading the way in creating a clean and garbage-free village.

Aiming at total cleanliness, the traders, under the banner of the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samiti (KVVES), secured the assistance of the Chungathara grama panchayat, the Total Sanitation and Health Mission (TSHM), the Mar Thoma College, and the National Service Scheme (NSS) unit of Mar Thoma Higher Secondary School in its effort to devise a cleanliness project titled ‘clean village, beautiful village.'

The National Food Security Bill is based on Sarvodaya principles as it has adopted a human life cycle approach, looks at providing coarse grains (nutri-cereals) at subsidised rates, giving impetus to the public distribution system, giving woman the position as the head of the family, and synergising drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and food, M.S. Swaminathan, Member of the Rajya Sabha and Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, said here on Monday.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) revealed that Asian cities were likely to contribute more than half the rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years.

According to The Asian Development Bank data most Asian cities do not have effective wastewater treatment systems - only 10 per cent of wastewater is treated in the Philippines while in Indonesia it is 14 per cent Viet Nam 4and India 9 per cent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 0.97 million people died annually due to poor water and sanitation facilities in the country and around 54,000 children under the age of five years also die from diarrhea caused by poor water and sanitation every year.

Cholera cases have soared in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent weeks, the UN said on Friday, bringing the number of people infected in the year-long outbreak to 22,000 with 584 deaths.

Aid agencies have been trying to halt the spread of the water-borne disease that has ravaged eight of the country's 11 provinces since January 2011.

"There has been a spike in cases" since mid-December, with figures on the rise in the capital Kinshasa in particular, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.