Seek some privacy among sugar canes, trees and cold walls. The site is found, made and cleaned with water, often contaminated. No paper. 524 million people follow this daily defecation routine in India, the most populous country in South Asia, according to data of the United Nations. One out of two Indians cannot go to the toilet because they do not have one.

November 19 marks World Toilet Day, a reason to raise awareness of the health problems faced by millions of people without resources. Open defecation causes serious diseases, especially in the most vulnerable sector of the population: children. Each year, diarrhea kills 120,000 children under the age of five and causes malnutrition, stunting and dangerous infections in many more. But it is not only the very young who are most affected: women are also vulnerable. They are afraid of encountering animals and of being hunted by unmanly men who sexually harass them.

But how to fight against such a widespread internship in India? In addition to the lack of resources, there is also a lack of awareness of the health risks associated with knowledge . So there is a double challenge: toilets must be installed and the population must be made aware of their benefits in order to put an end to open defecation. If toilets are installed, but there is no information about the advantages of using them, people will continue to defecate in the street.

The former requires a lot of money and physical space, which is hard to come by. A viable solution is the installation of communal toilets, but the biggest problem comes when a toilet is available and not used. Due to the accumulation of dirt, bad odor and even the lack of a door to the stall, many people avoid communal toilets. However, research has shown that usage increases with clean and well-maintained toilets.

"The biggest problem comes when you have a toilet and you don't use it."

Now, a study driven by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, UK, and involving the Navarra Center for International Development's researcher , Alex Armand, is investigating the relationship between willingness to pay to use a community toilet and the health information and quality of supply. The study is located in India and will be implemented in 2018 and the results will be released the following year. It aims to contribute to the end of open defecation and to gain a deeper understanding of the willingness of locals to pay for community toilets.

Informing the population of the benefits of using a toilet is the first step in getting millions of Indian citizens to start using them and prevent the spread of disease. World Toilet Day is a special time to remember that in some parts of the world people are dying because they do not have a toilet. Millions of people still don't know what it means to flush a toilet. We must invest in research and work on the ground to make people aware that a simple toilet can save lives, especially those of children.