While it has been a recurring topic on The Brazilian Report, the magnitude of Brazil’s sanitation gap is still hard to fathom for many foreign observers. In the country’s urban areas, 16.3 percent of the population still had no access to clean water in 2019, while an astonishing 45.9 percent live without sanitary sewage.
The World Health Organization (WHO) stresses that basic sanitation is essential for health promotion, as several diseases may be allowed to proliferate in the absence of these services. Brazil knows the risks of inadequate sanitation all too well, as the lack of treated water and sewage is a historical problem in the country that is far from being solved.
In 2019, around 2.6 million Brazilians living in urban centers had their homes connected to the sewage network. While this represented a 2.5 percent increase on the previous year, progress remains timid.
Official data on Brazil’s sanitation coverage comes from the National System of Sanitation Information (SNIS), linked to the Regional Development Ministry. SNIS coordinator Luiz Antônio Pazos admits that access to treated water and sewage is still “very low.”
“We’ve only reached a little over half of the population,”...
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