What is Sanitation?

UNESCO defines sanitation as "Maintaining clean, hygienic circumstances that help avoid disease through services such as waste collection and waste water removal". Sanitation essentially looks at controlling all the possible factors in the environment that surrounds us, that could threaten society's survival or development.

Sanitation is a term generally used with respect to health and undertaken in order to protect oneself from disease or illness. It could imply a number of things such as: the timely and correct disposal (or recycling) of waste. Sanitation systems gain even more importance as far as water supply and sewage discharge is concerned.

Sanitation and cleanliness go hand in hand, but today have come under a lot of cloud in most of the under-developed countries. The root cause for this is the fact that these places suffer not only from over population and over crowding issues, but also that they lack the basic funds and infrastructure required to build an effective sanitation model.

8 Public Health challenges on board a cruise ship

1) CLOSED MICRO-COMMUNITY
Guests and crew alike live and work in a close environment hence, the risk of illnesses is higher.

2) DENSELY POPULATED
In addition to the close environment there are big numbers of guests and crew in a relatively small surface area.

3) INTERNATIONAL GUESTS AND CREW
Guests and crew on board come from different countries hence, the risk of carrying illnesses are greater.

4) MOBILE & INTERACTIVE POPULATION
Much of the population on board is moving around and interaction levels are high.

5) RAPID TURNOVER
Guests and crew alike change (embark/disembark) frequently.

6) VARIABLE QUALITY AND SAFETY OF PROVISIONS
As food provisioning needs to arrive in very high volumes, its nigh impossible to check if all food items consumed are of best quality all the time.

7) POTENTIAL FOR EXPLOSIVE DISEASE OUTBREAKS
This is due to a close environment, whereby the risk for exposure concerning disease outbreaks may be high.

8) NO STANDARDIZED MEDICAL CARE SYSTEM
Even though there are hospitals on board their capabilities may be not adequate to treat certain diseases and incidents.

HIGH RISK POPULATION

Each year in the United States, food-borne illnesses cause approximately 76 million illnesses and 5000 deaths mainly among the high risk population. Depending on the contaminant, symptoms can vary from mild to severe gastric upset to even death in very serious situations.

The top 5 high risk populations are:-
1) Infants and young children.
2) Pregnant women.
3) Elderly people.
4) People taking certain medications.
5) People with weakened immune systems.