Sanitation Updates

Kathmandu: This is summer time. This is the season of diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, jaundice and typhoid. But, hospitals in Kathmandu have been witnessing lesser number of dysentery, cholera, jaundice and typhoid patients during the past few summers. The only water-borne disease whose number of cases still keeps going up is diarrhoea.

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Dr. Mahendra Bahadur Bista, Director of Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Hospital said, “Eighty percent of the people who suffered from diarrhoea are found to be careless in matters of personal hygiene, drinking water, and food.” Bista said that lack of good water supply is the major problem in the present context. With the beginning of this year’s summer season, 183 cases of diarrhea have already been registered at Sukraraj Infectious Disease Hospital, Teku.

Director of Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) Bhushan Tuladhar said, “Lack of proper sanitation and carelessness about diarrhoea infection during the rainy season is leading to the increase in the number of diarrhea patients.”

Read more: Shreejana Shrestha, Kathmandu Post / NGO Forum, 11 May 2008

Teaching children how to stay away from germs can be a powerful tool to help prevent some communicable diseases.

ABOUT 30 minutes into the interview with Cheng Chee Fong, director of a language enrichment centre for children, four-year-old Christopher poked his head into the room. Spotting me, a stranger, he veered a little towards us on his way out of the centre’s washroom trying to figure out what was going on.

But his curiosity did not make him forget to practise the proper hygiene habits ingrained into him by his teachers.

Stealing a glance at us, he picked up a tissue from a basket outside the washroom and wiped his hands, still dripping with water from washing, before throwing the tissue in a wastepaper basket and hurrying off to listen to his teacher tell the story of germs next door.

Read More - thestar

Organised by: Regional Capacity Building Partners (RECABIP), Nairobi, Kenya

Many development institutions have done very little to understand the contextual impacts of HIV and AIDS on Water, Hygiene and Environmental Sanitation programmes and have not integrated programmatic actions to halt the spread of HIV and AIDS, and mitigate its impact in their programmes. Similarly, AIDS service organizations have not analyzed the role of safe water, sanitation and Hygiene in fostering quality care, prevention, treatment, impact mitigation services at individual, household and community level. The Course focuses on strengthening skills, knowledge and understanding practical mainstreaming tools and processes.

Course fees: US $1,000 (excluding international travel, accommodation and food).

RECABIP is a network of professional organisations and individuals engaged in capacity building workshops, seminars, conferences and consultancy services in the fields of HIV and AIDS, Climate Change, Governance and Leadership issues. [ Note: the website provides no list of names with CVs of individual members of RECABIP, no names of clients, no annual report etc.]

Full information and application details are available on the RECABIP web site

For more info on HIV/AIDS and WASH see the IRC web site

By Sandra Bisin

TAKHTBAI, Pakistan, 5 May 2008 – In the remote town of Takhtbai in the North West Frontier Province, people took to the streets recently in a march to raise awareness during Pakistan’s biannual Child Health and Sanitation Week.

In the course of the week, events to reduce child deaths and disease by promoting better health, sanitation and hygiene practices were launched in six districts across the country.  (…)

Read all UNICEF Press Release

Malakal, on the banks of the world’s longest river in Sudan’s Upper Nile State, should have enough water to quench thirst and clean itself; instead the town was grappling with serious challenges as it marked the international week of sanitation in March. With the onset of the rainy season, aid workers worry that cholera could become a significant danger.

The situation is compounded by a serious shortage of toilet facilities. A survey by the NGO Relief International in 2007 found that 80 percent of the residents had no access to latrines or any other toilet facilities. A 2007 household survey in Sudan, conducted by UNICEF, found that only 7.5 percent of the population in Upper Nile practised improved sanitation.

But where latrines have been provided a change had been noticed. A study of be havioural change by the NGO Solidarités in El Luakat and El Mattar suburbs of Malakal found that latrine use went up from 16 percent in 2007 to 26 percent with an increase in facilities from 5 to 35 percent.

Sanitation week, from 17 to 20 March, was intended to scale up hygiene and health information across Upper Nile and in Malakal town. School children were taught songs on hygiene and some parts of the town were cleaned, but aid workers say very little was achieved.

Read more: IRIN, 30 Apr 2008

Some computer keyboards harbour more harmful bacteria than a toilet seat, research has suggested.

Consumer group Which? said tests at its London offices found equipment carrying bugs that could cause food poisoning.

Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats.

Microbiologist Dr Peter Wilson said a keyboard was often “a reflection of what is in your nose and in your gut”.

Read more: BBC News, 01 May 2008

The World Bank is set to launch a public health and sanitation programme in the country to curb diarrhoea related diseases.

The project dubbed Hand Washing With Soap (HWWS) has already cost the institution $50,000 (Sh4 million ) in a baseline survey and will be launched in September this year in selected towns across the country.

Speaking in Kisumu during a workshop attended by public health officers from various districts in Nyanza province, the country hand washing co-ordinator, Mr Rufus Eshuchi, said that most diseases like cholera and diarrhoea infections were at a high rate due to improper hand washing behaviour in several household.

Read More - Business Daily, Nairobi

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
28 April 2008, By Jane Akinyi

A national hand-washing programme funded by the World Bank and other donors has been unveiled. The Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) is supporting the Ministry of Health in a campaign that will have hand washing as part of its activities, to check cholera.

The first phase of the project, which is expected to cost $ 200,000 (Sh12.4 million), and run for three years, starts in September. WSP had used $ 50,000 (Sh3 million) in preparation for the programme, which would benefit many residents of Kisumu town, in the wake of a cholera outbreak in Nyanza.

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Angola Press Agency (Luanda), posted to the web 24 April 2008

A memorandum of understanding in the area of basic environmental sanitation was signed Wednesday, in Luanda’s Talatona Conventions Centre, in Luanda, where the fourth conference of environment ministers of CPLP is taking place, between the Angolan Ministry of Urbanisation and Environment (Minua) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

(…)   It is also going to be developed integrated strategies of social marketing for environmental sanitation and hygiene promotion in partnership with local NGOs and support to the exchange of learning experiences.  (…)

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Multiple activities to reduce child deaths being launched today
4/21/2008, Islamabad

A series of activities to reduce child deaths and disease by promoting better health, sanitation and hygiene practices will be launched in six districts across the country during the Child Health and Sanitation Week 2008 beginning today (Monday) and continuing till April 26. 

(….)  Pakistan’s Child Health and Sanitation Week follows a model successfully applied in Ghana, where regular health weeks proved instrumental in halving under-five mortality within five years. Integration of child and maternal healthcare with other vital interventions such as water, environment and sanitation is expected to reduce Pakistan’s high burden of child mortality at low cost using pre-existing infrastructure.

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