Japan may be famous for high-tech toilets, but one local firm is hoping a much more basic model can help solve deadly sanitation problems in developing countries.
More than two billion people around the world do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, and children are especially susceptible to diseases that can spread without hygienic toilets.
Household products firm Lixil has developed a latrine that sells for just a few dollars and features a self-sealing trapdoor to keep out disease-spreading insects, and seal in unpleasant odours.
Now it is forming an unusual partnership with the UN's children's agency UNICEF, which will help promote the company's SATO toilet in the hope of saving lives in developing countries.
Andres Franco, UNICEF's deputy director for private sector engagement, said today the partnership would capitalise on Lixil's "business, their technology, their knowledge, their innovation."