By the end of next month rural India could have an extra 5.2m toilets as part of a pre-election pledge by Narendra Modi, now prime minister, to build \u201ctoilets first and temples later.\u201d<\/p>\n
Readers of The BMJ<\/em> will no doubt be heartened by the Indian government\u2019s announcement<\/a>,\u00a0coming seven years after sanitation<\/a> topped a reader poll as the greatest “medical milestone” in the past 166 years\u00a0<\/p>\n Rebecca Coombes revisited the issue<\/a> in 2010 ahead of a meeting in New York to discuss progress reachine the millenium development goals, and community led total sanitation was one subject in our Medical Innovations<\/a>\u00a0video series The Indian government\u2019s announcement has been greeted with sceptcism by some commentators, who say that many toilets constructed after the 2004 tsunami were converted into storage or prayer rooms because indoor facilities are sometimes perceived as unhygienic.<\/p>\n Abhishek Bhartia, a healthcare administrator based in New Delhi, shares that scepticism. In a response <\/a>posted at the weekend, he says: \u201cGood to see the focus on providing toilet facilities but worried that such a short deadline will sacrifice focus on effective implementation. It’ll be a tragedy to have funds wasted because of undue haste in trying to solve a longstanding problem.\u201d<\/p>\n On the subject of responses, some regular eagle-eyed responders have contacted us because not all of their previous posts are being returned in search results. One email over the weekend asked if the missing content was because of \u201csabotage by a competitor!\u201d<\/p>\n The problem started after The BMJ\u2019s<\/em> new website went live<\/a> on June 30 and we are continuing to investigate the problem.<\/p>\n But the good news is that last week we did our first post-launch technical release, which addressed many of the glitches reported by you in the first few days after the new site went live. This blog<\/a>\u00a0explains more. Thanks again to everybody who has taken the time and trouble to let us know what they think of the new website, and to report any problems. We are very grateful.<\/p>\n David Payne<\/strong> is digital editor, The BMJ, and readers’ editor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the end of next month rural India could have an extra 5.2m toilets as part of a pre-election pledge by Narendra Modi, now prime minister, to build \u201ctoilets first and temples later.\u201d Readers of The BMJ will no doubt be heartened by the Indian government\u2019s announcement,\u00a0coming seven years after sanitation topped a reader poll […]<\/p>\n