In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet  an engineering marvel  removes waste out of sight and out of mind. As Steven Pinker recently wrote in “The Stuff of Thought,” the vocabulary of excretion has sneaked in and taken the taboo place previously held by religious words, and this switch parallels the rise of sewers and the sanitizing of excrement. A substance common to us all, and as vital to life as breathing, has become unspeakable, and particularly in the polite and powerful circles that could do something about its deadly effects.

Image Credit... Edel Rodriguez

There’s no place for squeamishness when  even without complicated and difficult disasters like Myanmar’s  diarrhea trails only pneumonia as the biggest killer of small children in the world, greater than tuberculosis, AIDS or malaria, in numbers equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every hour.

Humanitarian aid agencies use the shorthand “watsan” to stand for “water and sanitation.” There’s a reason those two words aren’t in alphabetical order, and it’s not poetry. When it comes to prioritizing aid, water has always received the lion’s share of attention and money. Eddy Perez, a sanitation expert at the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program, often shows an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito from the film “Twins.” One represents water and the other sanitation, and he doesn’t have to spell out which is which. Most developing countries spend less than 0.5 percent of their gross domestic product on watsan, and only 12 percent to 15 percent of that in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa goes to sanitation, according to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report.

Celebrities like Matt Damon and Jay-Z line up to talk about water. Shiny taps and clean water make good pictures. I’ve never seen a movie star pictured in front of a new latrine, though it can double its user’s life span.

Of course food and water are crucial. But feces can undermine both. If people are eating fecal particles, no amount of high-energy biscuits will make them well. In poor countries, diarrhea is the reason you find malnourished children in well-fed families. It’s why millions of girls drop out of school, and why millions of dollars’ worth of productivity is lost from workers sick with this week’s bout of dysentery.