Global Review of Sanitation System Trends and Interactions with Menstrual Management Practices

Global Review of Sanitation System Trends and Interactions with Menstrual Management Practices, 2012.

• Full text, pdf (5.4MB)

Kjellén, M., C. Pensulo, P. Nordqvist and M. Fogde. Stockholm Environment Institute.

This review of sanitation system trends and interactions with menstrual management practices has been conducted as part of the broader project on Menstrual Management and Sanitation Systems. 

It starts with a review of trends in the development of urban sanitation systems and then explores the interaction between menstrual management and sanitation systems, mainly relating to the issue of disposal of used menstrual blood absorption materials. Finally, it proposes a framework of interactions by positioning a range of issues of particular relevance for menstrual management into the different parts of the sanitation system.

USAID/Afghanistan – Latrine & Sanitation Options Manual

Latrine & Sanitation Options Manual, 2010. USAID/Afghanistan Sustainable Water Supply & Sanitation Project. 

• Download (pdf, 23MB)

OBJECTIVE OF THIS MANUAL

Poor sanitation is endemic across Afghanistan and exacts a heavy toll on public health. In response, the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD), multiple donors, the United Nations, several implementers, and USAID are engaged in providing funding and technical leadership to sanitation programs and facility construction throughout the country. These resources are sorely needed, but money and technologies alone cannot solve the problem. Donors and implementers must agree to promote, and uniformly apply sound social development, public health, marketing, finance, and technical guidance to the health-focused planning of new investments and the delivery of sustainable sanitation services.

This Manual aims to meet these needs by serving as a practical guide for Component 2 of USAID‘s Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation Project (SWSS) and the selection of sanitation technology options to satisfy local desires and meet national needs. While this Manual is developed specifically for SWSS, it is hoped that it will be a living document for the professionals and organizations working to address fecal contamination across Afghanistan.

INTENDED USERS OF THIS MANUAL
This Manual has been written for both engineering and non-engineering field practitioners responsible for the design, construction, and sustainable operation of sanitation programs and facilities. It is primarily intended as a guide for all aspects of SWSS‘ sanitation programs and facility improvements. The Manual is designed to be used by SWSS, its partners from across the United States Government (USG), and its Afghan collaborators to make appropriate choices and engage effectively with engineers working in the field.

Renewed research call for low-cost sanitation technologies in Bangladesh [deadline18 Feb 2013]

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:

Low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high water tables

This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.

The planned duration of the research project will be 18 months.

The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).

Download the BRAC Call Applicants Guide

Download the Application form

Application forms should be sent to bracactionresearch@irc.nl

The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 18 February 2013.

Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.

Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.

Updates from the Sanitation Marketing Community of Practice

The Sanitation Marketing Community of Practice – an initiative of the Australian WASH Reference Group and managed by WaterAid Australia. Below are 2 new announcements. 

1 – Yolande Coombes, WSP is available to answer SanMark questions
The Sanitation Marketing Community of Practice is very excited to have Yolande Coombes as our new resident guest expert. Yolande will be available in January 2013 to answer any SanMark practitioner questions. Questions can be submitted via the Sanitation Marketing website.
Be sure to include a brief description of your project and context. Questions, answers and comments will be posted on the website for peer to peer learning.

Yolande Coombes has more than 20 years experience in public health, behaviour change and evaluation. She gained her PhD in Public Health from the University of London. She has held academic positions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and College of Medicine in Malawi. As a consultant she has worked on topics on a number of communicable and non-communicable diseases. She has worked for both Population Services International and Marie Stopes International providing technical social marketing, behaviour change, franchising and M&E support. In 2007 she took up a position as a specialist consultant in sanitation marketing and hygiene with WSP and became a staff member in 2010 responsible for leading WSP’s sanitation and hygiene work in Africa, including task managing the AfricaSan 3 conference in 2011.

Darren Saywell/Plan Int’l – Urban Frontiers for Sanitation Programs

Below is a link to Darren Saywell’s presentation to the USAID Sanitation Working Group on December 12, 2012.

• Urban Frontiers for Sanitation Programs (pdf, 4.8MB)

Content

• Urban Frontiers for Sanitation Programs - Time to Get Real or Time to Get Really Worried?
• How urban sanitation is different
• The gap in urban sanitation
• What’s new and different?
• Community-Led Total Sanitation
• And more

WEDC & WaterAid – Equity and Inclusion in WASH

WEDC and WaterAid announce a new set of learning materials: ‘Equity and Inclusion in WASH’ 

Extensively field-tested by WaterAid and WEDC in Africa and Asia, the materials are participatory and interactive, and are designed to help WASH practitioners analyse and address the problems faced by the most disadvantaged people in accessing WASH services.

They can be used as stand-alone activities, or as part of a broader training programme.

• Link

Financing sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Reblogged from WASH Resources:

This guide provides highly practical decision-making tools for identifying the type of financing mechanisms to be implemented for on-site sanitation and small-piped sewerage systems.

The authors caution that the costs provided in the publication are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the wide variety of situations and practices encountered in the different countries
in sub-Saharan Africa.

The guide is organized into five chapters:

Read more… 224 more words

Conference explores faecal sludge management, a key link to up-scaling sanitation

Getting ready to access the pit for emptying, eThekwini , South Africa. Photo: Elisabeth von Muench, SuSanA

Since many experts believe that flush toilets and sewerage are unaffordable for the large majority urban and rural communities, faecal sludge management (FSM) is seen as a key link to up-scaling sanitation.

But do we need to reinvent the toilet or invent a sanitation industry? That was the concluding thought of Water for People’s Steven Sugden, one of the 100 or so presenters at the Second International Faecal Sludge Management conference (FSM2). Looking at all the presentations, the impression you get is that we need both better technologies and better business models.

FSM2 ook place in Durban, South Africa from 29-31 October 2012. The conference was structured around the following themes:

• On-site Sanitation as a Business
• Socio-political Aspects of On-site Sanitation
• Understanding On-site Sanitation
• Toilet Design for FSM Optimisation
• Pit Emptying – What are the Options?
• The How of Faecal Sludge Treatment
• Waste Not Want Not – Beneficial Use of Faecal Sludges
• Technology and Innovation
• Health Aspects of Faecal Sludges

All the presentations are available on the SuSanA website.

Will local governments ever be able to meet policy obligations for WASH in schools? Join the debate!

You are invited to join the 3rd and final e-debate on WASH in Schools, inspired by lessons from the SWASH+ Project.  It is taking place from 5-23 November at: http://washurl.net/fzute8

The focus on this last e-debate is on whether local governments will or will not be able to generate enough resources to meet their policy obligations for water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in schools.

Under genuine decentralization, local government can meet their policy obligations says Senior Programme Officer Dr. V. Kurian Baby in his opening argument.   Ex-national coordinator Sanitation & Hygiene from UNICEF India Sumita Ganguly takes the opposite position, arguing that local government will not prioritize WASH in schools in a resource competitive environment.

Add you own arguments to this debate. For more information go to:
www.washinschools.info/page/2312

Sustaining sanitation services costs 5-20 times more than building a latrine

Sustaining sanitation is much more expensive than building latrines. The 20-year cost of sustaining a basic level sanitation service per person in certain countries is anywhere from 5-20 times the cost per person of building the latrine in the first place.

This is one of the key findings on costing sustainable sanitation services, which are being highlighted in the first month of the WASHCost campaign. The campaign was launched on 24 October, and every month until March 2013, it brings a roundup of fast facts from the WASHCost research project, experiences from several organisations which are using the life-cycle cost approach and ways to get involved.