A cistern full of Chanel No. 5

Gold tap at the Bath Room in Clerkenwell.

“I dream of massive, pristine convenience. Brilliant gold taps, virginal white marble, a seat carved from ebony, a cistern full of Chanel No. 5, and a flunky handing me pieces of raw silk toilet roll. But under the circumstances I’ll settle for anywhere.”

— Renton in Trainspotting

The Inclusive Hotels Network is a group of inclusion-minded hotel operators, product designers and retailers, access consultants and architects who meet once a month to share knowledge and experience of designing, building, managing and staying in hotels. We're putting our heads together to develop best practice guidance about the subject. Anyone with an interest is welcome to join, and you can find out more here: Inclusive Hotels Network.

This month our meeting was hosted by the Bath Room, which is an oasis of baths, bidets, basins and loos, and some rather fancy taps. Rather like Renton, but for different reasons, many people would happily 'settle for anywhere' when they need to spend a penny, provided that they can use it. Knowing that there's a properly accessible unisex accessible facility at a venue or place of interest can be critical to a person's decision to visit it. If your restaurant / creche / hotel has one then let people know about it!

Basin display in the Bath Room.

The Bath Room is a showroom and information centre for designers and architects, with plenty of accessible products as well as the tap above. We heard from the Bath Room's experts in hotel and education design about how they are developing accessible washroom and hotel guest room solutions with aesthetic appeal as well as functionality and regulatory compliance. This is especially important in hotel guest rooms: why should the accessible bathroom look any less lovely than those in other suites? Raw silk toilet roll is perhaps a step too far, but if the guest experience is luxury then it should be just as luxurious in the accessible rooms. Concept Freedom by Ideal Standard may well have Chanel No. 5 in the Cisterns.

And before you judge anyone coming out of an accessible loo who doesn't look like they have a disability, have a read of this by Sam Cleasby.

Accessible loo at the Bath Room in Clerkenwell.

The gold tap at the top of this post is not accessible but would be if it were operated with lever handles.

Liberia free of Ebola

Fountains at Somerset House

So what has a picture of the courtyard at Somerset House got to do with Liberia? Well it was here that I took a break from seeing the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition on Sunday. I don't think I was alone in needing some fresh air after seeing the Iris D'Or winning series of photographs by John Moore (Getty Images). Moore visited Liberia twice while the country was in the grip of Ebola and these photographs are the result.

On Saturday the World Health Organisation announced that Liberia was free of the disease at last. A public holiday was declared and people celebrated victory over the disease that took so many of their friends and family. Ebola continues to affect people in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

My interest in Liberia comes from knowing people who have worked there as reporters and aid workers, and from having twinned my toilet with one in Bana Town. The need for adequate sanitation continues in Liberia and in many places around the world. Populations in areas affected by conflict and natural disasters, such as the recent earthquakes in Nepal are especially in need.

Please take a look at the Toilet Twinning scheme.

World toilet day

World Toilet Day banner.

I've written before about why I've twinned my loo with one in Liberia, but today is World Toilet Day so here are some statistics about the Cord and Tearfund Toilet Twinning campaign.

"Lack of access to clean water and effective sanitation impacts the health of a community as well as their ability to develop economically. Here are some of the hard facts:

• "2.5 billion people across the world don’t have somewhere safe to go to the toilet (WHO / UNICEF)
• Bad sanitation is one of the world’s biggest killers: it hits women, children, old and sick people hardest
• Every minute, three children under the age of five die because of dirty water and poor sanitation (WHO)
• Right now, more than 50 per cent of hospital beds in developing countries are filled with people who have an illness caused by poor sanitation or dirty water (UNDP)
• In Africa, half of young girls who drop out of school do so because they need to collect water – often from many miles away – or because the school hasn’t got a basic toilet.
• The lack of a loo makes women and girls a target for sexual assault as they go to the toilet in the open, late at night
• Many women get bitten by snakes as they squat in the grass to go to the toilet
• For every £1 spent on a water and sanitation programme, £8 is returned through saved time, increased productivity and reduced health costs. (UNDP)
• In 2000, 189 countries signed up to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The sanitation target for 2015 is currently way off-target and won’t be met in sub-Sharan African until the 23rd century."

On November 19th last year 96 toilets were twinned. This year the target is 100. Right now (09:40) the counter on the Toilet Twinning website is at 16. Here's the latrine in Liberia that my loo is twinned with.

Toilet Twinning certificate.

There are more ways to help on the WaterAid UK site.

A toilet in Liberia

Cover image of Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.

Steven Johnson's book The Ghost Map is an account of the horrific cholera outbreaks in London in the 1850s. Doctor John Snow and Reverend Henry Whitehead disagreed with the official line that the disease that was killing so many people was airborne. Snow suspected that cholera traveled between people and meticulously mapped the number of deaths per household in Soho. Meanwhile, Reverend Whitehead noticed patterns of behaviour in the sick people he visited. The Soho epidemic appeared to centre on a communal water pump in Broadwick Street and Snow eventually convinced authorities to remove its handle. 

Tragically, cholera is still prevalent in many areas of the world. Having read Johnson's graphic descriptions of what the disease does to a human body, and knowing that it can be prevented, water sanitation projects always get my attention. Also, I spend much of my professional life talking about toilets, so when Toilet Twinning came to my attention on Twitter I felt I should support it and twinned my loo with one in Liberia.

“Just one in four Liberians has access to safe drinking water, according to the World Health Organisation, and half of all Liberians have no access to a toilet and use streams or open areas. Outbreaks of water-borne diseases like cholera occur regularly. As many as one in five deaths in Liberia are blamed on water and sanitation problems.”

— http://www.toilettwinning.org/about-our-bogs/liberia

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is available is available to buy at Foyles.

The commemorative pump in Broadwick Street, Soho, with the John Snow pub in the background.