
How Bangladesh vanquished diarrhoea - known
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21739211-its-gdp-person-barely-half-indias-it-has-lower-child-mortality-rate-how-bangladesh
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cornholio
The approach to build latrines for the poorest people then shame the "rich"
into building ones for themselves is marvelously devious.

According to the article, even marriages were canceled after it was revealed
that the family of one of the newly weds is without this essential status
simbol.

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rangibaby
About 100 years ago in New Zealand my great great grandfather was very proud
of his “WC”. Of course only guests were allowed to use it!

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goldenkey
What does WC stand for?

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forinti
Is English your mother tongue?

In South America, people use WC, Patent (because it was written on the loo),
or just Water (in Uruguay, at least) a lot. So it would be funny if (at least
WC) was not as known in the English-speaking world. Patente (used in Brazil)
is obviously just derived from the Patent label.

~~~
merraksh
Italians use "water" (spelled váter") or WC (spelled "vee-chee"), rarely
"tazza" or the less elegant "cesso".

~~~
marktangotango
In Germany, Crapper manufactured toilet bowls are still common.

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kchoudhu
When I was growing up in Bangladesh in the early 90s, the only channel on TV
had continuous ads for Orsaline (Pedialyte in the US) and what to do if you
didn't have (or couldn't afford) it when your child was ill.

I have long since left Bangladesh, but it warms my heart to see that the the
grassroots campaign paid off in droves.

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cjbenedikt
Interesting that the article doesn't mention Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad
Yunus. In order to be eligible for his micro loans people had to commit to
building a toilet/WC/loo amongst other things. Given that approx. 140 mio
people in Bangladesh borrowed micro loans from him he must have had some
influence on it.

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rubayeet
> Given that approx. 140 mio people in Bangladesh borrowed micro loans from
> him he must have had some influence on it.

That's a little far fetched. I am one of the 140 mil and I do not recall
borrowing from him (or anyone I know). As novel as the idea of micro financing
is, realistically it has little impact on poverty reduction in Bangladesh, the
RMG and manpower export sector has more stake in the claim.

The sanitation revolution can be attributed to Sir Fazle Hasan Abed[0], the
founder of BRAC[1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazle_Hasan_Abed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazle_Hasan_Abed)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAC_(organization)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAC_\(organization\))

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nhorob67
A similar story is detailed in a booked called The Power of Moments. In
particular, they focus on the shaming that they do to change behavior

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FractalLP
Can someone summarize? I could only read the 1st paragraph before ads froze up
my browser.

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smt88
This extension is excellent and works on mobile if you have Android Firefox:
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

If you're on iOS, Brave has an ad blocker built in.

~~~
FractalLP
Windows Phone. A lot of great things about the platform has kept me using it,
but modern (aka bloated) websites aren't too great these days.

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zaroth
“In Matlab, a part of Bangladesh with good data, deaths from diarrhoea and
dysentery have dropped by about 90% since the early 1990s (see chart).”

I just kept reparsing and trying to error correct that sentence over and over
until it finally sunk in that yes, they are saying _Matlab_ is actually the
name of a place in Bangladesh.

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chimeracoder
> I just kept reparsing and trying to error correct that sentence over and
> over until it finally sunk in that yes, they are saying Matlab is actually
> the name of a place in Bangladesh.

I'm Bengali, and I looked up the spelling of the name. It looks like it's
spelled মতলব, which means it's pronounced more like "Motlobe" (the second "o"
is halfway between "lob" and "lobe"). It means "plan" or "project", which I'm
guessing refers to some attempt at creating a township at some point (or being
named after a place that was).

For reasons, Bengali words are often transliterated in the Sanskrit form,
which means that the spelling doesn't really always represent their actual
pronunciation. (This is why people often have a _harder_ time pronouncing my
name when they see it spelled out in English, because the final syllable is
transliterated according to Sanskrit, but pronounced differently. It's sort of
like -ough as a suffix in English.)

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NPMaxwell
And I can imagine a small techie tourism trade for people who want to say,
"Yeah. I've been to Matlab. For two weeks, I breathed it, ate in it, and slept
in it."

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bullen
Can we get a flag for pay-walled/register only content on posts and a checkbox
in settings on our profile to hide these posts?

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DoofusOfDeath
Not sure why you got downvoted. It seems like a very pragmatic and helpful
feature.

