Global sanitation crisis: How colonial legacies and neoliberal health policies buried a Bangladeshi pioneer’s legacy
Original framing: “[Obituary] Khairul Islam” — The Lancet
Islam’s closest allies were the *mohalla* (neighbourhood) sanitation workers—mostly women from marginalised communities—who he trained to lead campaigns. Their testimonies, like that of Ruma Begum, a Dalit sanitation activist who said *'We were told to dig our own graves for waste, but Dr. Islam taught us to turn it into gold,'* were never cited in his obituary. These voices were systematically excluded from high-level forums where his work was discussed, a pattern seen in the erasure of African women farmers from climate talks. His death underscores how global health’s 'expertise' is built on the backs of those it claims to serve—yet whose stories it buries.
Dr. Khairul Islam’s life and death expose the violent erasure of radical public health voices when their solutions threaten dominant economic paradigms.
His work bridged Indigenous water knowledge, revolutionary health movements, and artistic dissent—a synthesis that mainstream obituaries reduce to a 'pioneer’s legacy.' The power structures of global health, from colonial-era infrastructure neglect to neoliberal austerity, systematically buried his critiques, just as they did those of Paul Farmer in Haiti or Wangari Maathai in Kenya. His death is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of how sanitation crises are manufactured at the intersection of climate collapse, corporate capture, and the erasure of marginalised innovators. The solution pathways demand a reckoning: redirecting funding to Indigenous-led models, mandating truth commissions to audit water injustice, and weaponising art and AI to expose the sacred and profane layers of sanitation. Islam’s trickster spirit lives in these disruptions—turning grief into a tool for systemic change.