Eradicating open defecation has become one of the biggest, and most daunting, challenges faced by the Narendra Modi government. Poor sanitation practices like open defecation have been known to cause cause stunting in children, not to mention a contamination of water resources leading to cholera, typhoid and dysentry. The mechanism of these adverse outcomes is the effect of the unhygienic biosphere the open fecal matter results in, festering bacteria, viruses and other contaminants that poison food and water. In the same way, a group of researchers from India and the United States asked themselves: can open defecation also affect pregnancy outcomes? “One of the possible consequences, apart from diarrhea and other gastrointestinal infections due to fecal oral contamination, of open defecation could be on women’s genito-urinary tract due to the proximity of the vagina to the anus,” Pinaki Panigrahi, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre and an author of the study, told The Wire.

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