Africa, India, and some areas in South America are open cesspools where children play, parents wash clothes and get drinking water, workers irrigate crops, etc. In those areas, fresh water is unknown and open defecation (OD) is common.

Now for the first time in human history most people live in cities, often in the slums. More than 70 percent of Africa’s urban population lives in slums! Around one-third of the urban population in developing countries, nearly one billion people, live in slums, according to estimates. There is one toilet for every 500 people in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

However, the biggest problem is in rural areas where the problem can be more quickly solved but not without difficulty. Nearly 540 million people, more than 60 percent of Africa’s population, currently practice open defecation according to the African Development Bank Group. And worldwide, more than a billion people still “go out back” to take care of one of life’s most important functions. Moreover, in all those areas, they do so where deadly cobras, lions, tigers, etc., roam freely–at night! Seems as if that ever-present danger would cause “bashful bladder” and “bashful bowel.”

Of the one billion people who still go “behind the house” to defecate, 82% live in ten nations: India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, and Mozambique. Note that the last five of those nations are in Africa.

The UN spent a huge amount of money to teach people in undeveloped nations to use a latrine but they admit it has been an “abysmal” failure and it seems they flushed their money down the toilet. UN officials admit that the problem is “attitude,” not only the absence of toilets. The WHO Public Health Director lamented, “What is shocking…is this picture of someone practicing open defecation and in the other hand having a mobile phone.” Is that multiple tasking in third world nations?

Such unhealthy, uncivilized, unnecessary practices as open defecation result in the problem of children playing in fecal matter and animals walking through disease laden matter, plus animals eating it. Add to that the problem of contaminated water runoff into wells and streams from which natives get their drinking water, wash their bodies, and wash their clothes. They use contaminated water to irrigate their crops, cook with, etc. Children play in the water. A hundred viruses come from human feces. It’s a surprise that anyone is still alive in Africa, India, and similar nations.

In many villages that have simply dug latrines (not a fancy concrete slab with a hole) the open pits are often located upstream thereby contaminating the water used for drinking, cooking, etc. Also, often the streams are used for defecation and urination. Seldom do people wash their hands after defecating and when they do so, the water is almost always contaminated!

Inadequate sewage treatment from large cities only adds to the other pollution and most cities pump toxins into the water and it poisons everything downstream and is added to the runoff from each village and agricultural area. Runoff from mines creates heavy metals such as nickel, molybdenum, zinc, cadmium and lead. All these contaminants produce a toxic “cocktail” that poisons every living creature downstream.

Where are the national and municipal leaders in all this? It would not take much money or ingenuity for a mayor or village chief to build a common toilet in the middle of a village. The free world has given trillions of dollars to African nations in the past 50 years and they haven’t solved two simple problems: How to drink and defecate safely. Corrupt national leaders are legendary but surely they could release a few dollars from their Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts to solve these two basic problems.

The problem is more complex than it seems as expressed by a health official who said that “most people want toilets for reasons of convenience, privacy and status rather than ensuring healthy environment, good sanitation or the prevention of diseases.” Some believe that the feces of children are not harmful while others believe they will become demon possessed if they use an available village toilet.

There are 4 billion cases of diarrhea in Africa every year and about 2.2 million people die from it, most of them being children under two years old. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, worm infestation, and malaria are killers especially of children. Malaria kills between 1 to 3 million people, 90 percent taking place in sub-Sahara Africa.

India boasts 1.2 billion people yet 600 millions of their citizens still defecate in the open and the numbers continue to grow! British rule for hundreds of years didn’t help in that regard.

According to National Geographic, the Ganges River at Allahabad is “one of the holiest spots in Hinduism. Allahabad, Persian for ‘settled by God,’ plays host every dozen years to the Kumbh Mela, the biggest gathering of humanity on Earth, when tens of millions of pilgrims come to wash away their sins at the confluence of the three rivers.” Two problems: sins can never be washed away by water. The Bible teaches in I John 1:17 that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Water has nothing to do with personal salvation. Second problem is the Ganges River is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. It is flowing sewage.

Even more civilized nations such as Israel are not without filthy rivers. The Jordan River is one of the most polluted rivers in the world and I have baptized people in it a few times! I had no thought of pollution since the Jordan flows from the Sea of Galilee where I have boated and from which I have eaten fish many times.

After most of the Jordan water is diverted to irrigate the fruit orchards in Israel and neighboring Jordan, the remaining water flows into the Dead Sea. Without knowing of the pollution, I swam unthinkingly a few times in the Dead Sea. Untreated sewage water and agricultural runoff is responsible for polluting the river in which Christ was baptized.

But the big problem is Africa. Maybe some of the former colonial nations could “make restitution” for their former “evil” by digging wells and installing village pumps. That solves problem number one.

Problem number two can be solved by digging a hole (away from the well) and building thatched sides for privacy? Voilà, we have a privy or African Outhouse.

In this column I have theoretically solved Africa’s biggest problems so there should be jubilation from Angola to Zimbabwe! Maybe they will name their male outhouses after me: Boys!

Maybe tomorrow I will clean up the polluted rivers starting with the Jordan.

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

While there are huge modern cities, there are thousands of villages (containing a few hundred to many thousands of people) where they still live in primitive conditions, mainly dirty drinking water and outside defecation.  From this environment have come HIV, Ebola, and other exotic diseases that health officials have a commission to abolish or control. They are failing at abolishing and controlling.

Africa is the open toilet of the world, a disease-making factory. (If you want to know, Nov. 19 is World Toilet Day.) Someplace in the world, a child dies of poor sanitation every 20 seconds. And some African diseases are being brought to America.

May I suggest that very simple additions to the African lifestyle might solve or help alleviate the matter? How about building some old-fashioned outhouses in the villages? I have been to some of those villages and never saw an outhouse–not one! How could they have gone thousands of years without thinking of a better solution to one of the most important functions of human life?

One child dies every minute from preventable diarrhea. Cholera and typhoid are normal results of bad sanitation. Each family building their own outhouse would solve much of the sanitation problem.

Furthermore, another major third world problem is contaminated drinking water; however, eight drops of unscented bleach in one gallon of clear water (16 drops for cloudy water) will kill many of the disease-causing pathogens. Such actions do not require a multi-million dollar study or a vast infusion of federal funds. But I suppose my partial solution is too simple: Dig a hole for wastes and another hole, uphill if possible, for water and if a well is not possible, then use bleach or boiling for water purification.

Concerning Ebola, the Director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden testified before Congress and admitted that there is not much confidence that the CDC can “deal with things like this.” He added, “Their experience in dealing with bacterial warfare is almost zero, but that’s almost what you have here….We know almost nothing, this is a world we’ve barely scratched the surface in.” He continued. “We are probably not prepared. We have nothing that stops a virus other than quarantine and hoping it dies out.” Hoping is not a scientific policy and has not been effective in controlling epidemics!

Frieden oozes gloom and has little hope. He seems to be setting us up for another massive failure on the part of the CDC. Frieden recently had experience as Commissioner of New York City Department of Health where former Mayor Bloomberg outlawed large surgery drinks and trans fats but it was struck down by a state court. The New York Post characterized the city’s attack on trans fats and sodas as, “a nanny state on steroids.” Now, Frieden has Ebola in his sights. I hope he is more successful because Ebola is a more dangerous than large sodas.

Contagion experts tell Ebola health workers to wear protective gear in dealing with the vigorous, vicious virus. Two infected Americans were returned to Atlanta wearing total protection; however, I want to know why that is so necessary if the disease is not airborne and one must come in contact with an infected person’s body fluids. And while there is no evidence to prove airborne infections, there is no evidence to prove otherwise. Sane, sensible scientists take the worst-case scenario not the best-case. You hope (and pray!) for the best but plan for the worst.

Planning for the worst would demand that infected people not be brought back to America for treatment, even highly dedicated and compassionate people like the infected missionaries. At first blush it may seem calloused to leave infected Americans in Africa but good, safe medical procedures would dictate safety over sentimentalism. Of course, the infected medical personnel should get the best care available and the CDC and others could see that it becomes a reality.

A major German virologist Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit caused concern, consternation, and contempt when he suggested that the battle against Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia was lost and that the virus would eventually kill 5 million people!

It is a fact that an unusually large proportion of health care workers have been infected. Were they so careless as to make contact with body fluids of Ebola patients or were they infected by breathing the virus?

Why not assume airborne possibilities until proved otherwise? It is a fact that bubonic plague (98% of world’s modern cases have been in Africa) is caused by bites from infected fleas carried by rats. During the Middle Ages when infection reached the lungs, it became even more deadly pneumonic plague since it was then airborne. Plague could then be contracted by coughing and sneezing.

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet is a past director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and is very concerned about the infectious possibilities. She revealed a 2012 Canadian study in which healthy monkeys and infected monkeys were kept side by side in cages but had no physical contact. The healthy monkeys became infected with Ebola without any physical contact! So, can we and should we trust the CDC for the answers?

Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, notes in a New York Times op-ed article that, “there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years.” He suggested the horrifying possibility that Ebola could mutate to become transmissible through the air. He added that “virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering [airborne transmission] in private.”

Obama has sent 3,000 military personnel to Africa. Will they enforce the quarantine in Sierra Leone where one million households are required to stay indoors? Will the U.S. troops be authorized to protect themselves if people refuse to obey and panic? Will infected soldiers be returned to America or treated in Africa? What about the soldiers who will have sex with local prostitutes and come home within the 21-day incubation period?

On Sept. 16 the news reported that the U.S. State Department has purchased 160,000 hazmat suits for Ebola protection. We sure don’t need that many for health works so why are so many needed?

Again, hope and pray for the best and make plans for the worst. I’m afraid the worst may be staring us in the face. Can we trust the CDC to deal with the worst?

What other vicious, virulent viruses are percolating in Africa as I write?

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY  Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”