Correction Appended

The toilet and the latrine, which helped revolutionize public health in New York, London and Paris more than a century ago, are among the most underused tools to combat poverty and disease in the developing world, says a United Nations report released yesterday.

“Issues dealing with human excrement tend not to figure prominently in the programs of political parties contesting elections or the agendas of governments,” said Kevin Watkins, the main author of the report. “They’re the unwanted guests at the table.”

The human cost of that taboo, however, is more unspeakable than the topic itself, he said. Every year, more than two million children die of diarrhea and other sicknesses caused by dirty water and a lack of “access to sanitation.”

That is the common euphemism for the reality that more than a third of the world’s people — 2.6 billion — have no decent place to go to the bathroom, while more than a billion get water for drinking, washing and cooking from sources polluted by human and animal feces.