The priority is containment. That’s as fancy as it sounds: With the water table only 20 centimeters below the surface in Myanmar, it is little use to dig pit latrines, so buckets or tanks for human waste are needed instead. Providing such things is made harder by the refusal of Myanmar’s government to accept help. And it is also hampered by our unwillingness to even talk about it.

In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet — an engineering marvel — removes waste out of sight and out of mind.