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MeneameBrazilian Health Foundation (Funasa) president Danilo Fortes announced the entity will double investments in sanitation over the coming years, government news agency Radiobrás reported.
Fortes said the resources from federal government growth acceleration plan PAC should allow investments of about 1bn reais (US$604mn) per year for sanitation works in municipalities with up to 50,000 inhabitants.
More funding for sanitation is necessary to counteract the lack of investment in the sector in the last decade, according to Fortes.
Basic sanitation is very important to health policy, he said, adding: "In Canindé city in Ceará state 50% of the population was connected to sanitation services. This reduced hospital admissions for water related illnesses by 60%."
The direct relation between access to sanitation and health is one of the conclusions of the research paper Sanitation and Health, published on May 19 by Brazilian private thinktank Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). One example in the study shows that children up to six who do not have access to a sewage network are 32% more likely to die.
The FGV study stresses that Brazil spends only 0.09% of GDP in sanitation. Therefore, only 46% of the Brazilian population has access to sewage treatment. This goes down to 2.9% in rural areas.
It is precisely these areas that will be the focus of Funasa's PAC investments, which aim to reach isolated populations, such as indigenous people, rural communities and the 1,356 small towns (with less than 50,000 inhabitants) which, according to Funasa data, have the highest national rates of infant mortality.
The plan is to raise sewage services in these segments from 38% to 65%. In addition, Funasa aims to provide at least a third of indigenous villages with sanitation, up from the current 20%.
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