Rural China has more sanitary toilets

About 72 percent of households in rural China have access to sanitary toilets, said the National Health and Family Planning Commission on Tuesday.

A previous survey in 1993 found only 7.5 percent of all the households across the country had access to sanitary toilets. A national initiative to build toilets in rural China was launched in 2004 to improve rural sanitation and reduce the incidence of infectious disease.

Efforts still need to be made to improve in rural areas, according to the Outline for the Development of Chinese Women (2011-2020) issued by the State Council, saying 85 percent of rural households should have access to sanitary toilets by 2020.

A report by the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization in 2012 showed that 2.5 billion people in the world still practiced open defecation or lacked adequate sanitation facilities.