Sanitation Updates

Total sanitation in action:

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How did you provide sanitation coverage for all the 12 villages under your Chakchaka GP? 

It was not easy at all. We made it mandatory for all residents of this GP to ensure that there were sanitary toilets in their dwellings and they use only those. To get any certificate or facilities from the panchayat office they must satisfy us first. We are still following this procedure. We did graffiti on walls and intensive campaigning on sanitation. Sanitary toilet facilities were extended to 17 primary schools, two high schools and 27 Anganwadi centres. We also provide disinfectants to schools. To make the environment clean in Chakchaka Industrial Growth Centre complex we took up a social forestry scheme and planted more than 25,000 trees at Chapaguri. We did all these with our own funds.   (…)

Read all thestatesman.net

The vice President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. Alhaji Aliu Mahama yesterday, in Accra, launched the Ghana sanitation campaign and called on all stakeholders to see environmental sanitation as a key challenging issue which requires immediate attention.      (…)

He called on public and private sector players, development allies, traditional rulers and the civil society to see the current sanitation problem as a national issue and deal with it as such. The campaign is under the theme: ‘Repackaging Sanitation for Accelerated National Development’.

Read all ModernGhana.com

NEW LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA: Basic Sanitation, the Movie (Saneamento basico, o filme), JORGE FURTADO, Brazil, 2008, 112 minutes, Color

“In order to stem “the smell of poop” in the river that runs through the Italian immigrant village of Crystal Line in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul, Marina Marghera Figueiredo applies for government money to build a new sewer. Unfortunately, there are no funds allocated for sanitation, but there is a sizeable grant available to make a 10-minute fiction video. After much bickering with affable husband Joaquim and dad Otaviano, they decide to write and produce “The Sewer Monster” as a way to get the money to clean the river. (.. .) -Eddie Cockrell-”

Read all FilmFestDC

Daily Trust (Abuja), Posted to the web 25 April 2008, Abdul Hassan

As health experts explore how to make the Nigerian society healthy, one worrisome impediment is the common act of open defecation.

The practice, hitherto restricted to the rural areas, is now a common sight in the urban centres. In Abuja, the nation’s capital for instance, it is not unusual to see adults stooping by the roadside and passing excreta, oblivious of motorists and passersby. (…)

Read all:   AllAfrica.com    and Daily Trust

While India celebrates the International Year of Sanitation, little has been done for the abolition of the degrading work of manual scavenging.

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Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of Safai Karamachari Andolan, told Hardnews, “For us it’s not just about how much they (scavengers) earn. We are looking at it as a work below human dignity. They are also prone to many diseases and obviously they don’t have enough money for their treatment. We stand against the system of the society where one is to defecate and other is to clean. We are looking forward to eradicating this system of scavenging by 2010.”

Read More - Hardnews

The shamefully weak presence of the health sector in advocating for improved access to water and sanitation is incomprehensible and completely short-sighted. Children who benefit from the huge international effort and financial and human resources spent on immunisation and bednet distribution still have a strong chance of dying from diarrhoeal illnesses—the second biggest killer of children under 5 years. Yet the global health community is standing aside, absolving itself of responsibility, and firmly passing the buck to the water and sanitation sectors. The health sector could, and should, be a powerful voice in lobbying governments, and demanding that donors give more funding to water and sanitation, just as it has done, with some success, in advocating for access to essential medicines.

The complete Lancet editorial - March 29, 2008

KAMRA, 6 March 2008 (IRIN) - Until recently, Mohammad Nafees was like most children in his village when it came to relieving himself.

“I used to poop outside. Just over there,” the nine-year-old giggled, pointing to the green field near his family’s home in the mountain village of Kamra, about 70km east of Islamabad.

With UK funding, local NGO, Lahore-based Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN), is spearheading a campaign to make villages open defecation-free by bringing about behaviourial change through mobilisation.

Read more

See also: Livelihoods Connect - Community Led Total Sanitation in Pakistan

A Powerpoint presentation by Merri Weinger, USAID, given at the Side Meeting on Sanitation, Hygiene and HIV/AIDS Sanitation, Hygiene and HIV/AIDS at the AfricaSan 2008 Conference.

Read the presentation (PDF, 380 KB)

Most sanitation programmes are silent about women and adolescent girls’ need to clean and change menstrual towels and menstrual management tends to be ignored in latrine design and construction and excluded from hygiene education packages. Even reproductive health and preventive health programmes in developing countries often do not address this sensitive issue. A recent article in Source Bulletin describes how WaterAid has tackled this issue in Bangladesh.

One of the first studies to highlight the lack of attention in the water sector given to menstrual hygiene was written by
Sowmyaa Bharadwaj and Archana Patkar from Junction Social consultants, Mumbai, India, in November 2004, called “Menstrual Management in Developing Countries: Taking Stock”. They gave a presentation on this topic at the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Schools Roundtable meeting, which took place in Oxford, UK, 24-26 January 2005.

In Africa, one of the activities of the QUEST programme (1998-2006) involved research in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda on the links between life skills, sexual maturation and school sanitation. One of aspects looked at was how poor menstrual management negatively affected girls school attendance. Unfortunately the research reports from this study are not available online.

The latest issue of Source Weekly elaborates on an earlier posting in this blog about the problems women in Kampala, Uganda, face due to the lack of proper places for disposal of used sanitary pads. The Source article also gives a link to a report published last year, called “Menstrual hygiene: a neglected condition for the achievement of several Millennium Development Goals”. The report was the outcome of a “Stakeholder Meeting on Menstrual Hygiene for Girls and Women in Developing Countries”, held on 28 November in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Ms Carol Nampiina’s posting to her new workplace coincided with her monthly menstrual flow that fell in July, and it took her less than two days in her new office to try and confide in someone about her discomfort.

Nampiina was uncomfortable at office for unlike her previous residence where she easily disposed off her sanitary pads, her new office lacked a sanitary bin. During the times she had her flow, she had to wrap her used pad, keep it in her bag until late in the evening when she went back home to dispose it.

Indications are that the lack of proper places for disposal of used sanitary pads is one of the overlooked practices prevailing in modern offices in Uganda, which is aggravated by the fact that many offices do not have “women’s only” toilets.

Read more: David Mugabe, East African Business Week (Kampala) / allAfrica.com, 28 Jan 2008