The diagnosis carried out as part of the preparation of this national policy has shown that the situation is both a health, environmental and economic disaster but also a time bomb for future generations. The challenges concern:

• The lack of sanitation primarily affects vulnerable populations. It is more the poor who suffer from diseases linked to the lack of access to clean water, adequate sanitation and a healthy environment;
• For hundreds of thousands of women and girls, the lack of adequate sanitation represents an attack on their dignity, a considerable loss of time and energy and a denial of the right to attend a normal school;
• A third of the Burundian population lives daily in deplorable hygiene conditions and is in contact with an atmosphere saturated with bad odors and containing germs and other pathogenic elements linked to the non-existence or non-compliance with health and environmental standards. The consequences amount to thousands of deaths per year;
• Diseases caused by poor hygiene conditions and the lack of adequate sanitation undermine economic growth and amount to millions of lost working days every year and;
• Beyond the direct consequences on the Burundian population, the lack of hygiene and sanitation constitute obstacles to the development of external investment and in particular tourism.

Faced with the magnitude of the challenges encountered, it is necessary to set sanitation as a priority at the national level and to mobilize public and private funding at significant levels in the years to come. It is also necessary to define a vision that can mobilize all actors, bring coherence to actions that have hitherto been limited or disparate and increase the level of political priority given to sanitation. All of these reasons justify the development of this national policy document on sanitation in Burundi.