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

Lack of pit latrines and general toilet facilities in the northern regions of the country is likely to compromise health officials’ efforts in curbing cholera, a disease that has since early this year claimed more than 37 lives.

Regional Health Director for the Ohangwena Region Dr Naftali Hamata has said if no drastic measures are taken to address the situation, the affected areas should be prepared to have cholera cases every rainy season.

Since Friday, 1 406 suspected cholera cases were recorded in the Ohangwena Region with 17 confirmed laboratory cases and 19 deaths, Dr Hamata said.

Read More - New Era

The implementation of a dengue control programme in Puerto Rico led to the discovery of previously unknown mosquito breeding sites underground. Research published in the March 2008 issue of Medical and Veterinary Entomology showed that large number of mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti), which transmit dengue fever to humans, were found to breed in septic tanks.

R. Barrera, M. Amador, A. Diaz, J. Smith, J. L. Munoz-Jordan, Y. Rosario (2008). Unusual productivity of Aedes aegypti in septic tanks and its implications for dengue control.
Medical and Veterinary Entomology ; vol. 22, no. 1 ; p. 62-69.

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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

CHILDREN’S health is under threat from school toilets, according to a report out today that condemns poor education funding.

Many of them are so disgusting the National Assembly’s Enterprise and Learning Committee is calling for urgent action.
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“We are living in the 21st century, yet many school toilets are like something from the Dark Ages,” said Sharon Mills, of Deri, near Bargoed, whose five-year-old son Mason Jones died after contracting E.coli.

Read More - icWales

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

NEW DELHI: India continues to have the world’s highest number of polio cases this year, with the disease having crippled more children till April than it did during the same period in 2007.

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The children who got polio despite multiple doses, did not get enough number of doses to develop adequate protection to polio virus,” a health ministry official said. According to experts, children living in areas with poor environmental sanitation and high population density, like the endemic districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, need higher doses of polio vaccine to be adequately protected against the virus as they are more frequently exposed to polio virus under these circumstances.

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Leptospirosis, a life-threatening zoonotic disease, has become an important urban slum health problem. Epidemics of leptospirosis now occur in cities throughout the developing world, as the growth of slum settlements has produced conditions for rat-borne transmission of this disease. In this prevalence survey of more than 3,000 residents from a favela slum community in Brazil, Geographical Information System (GIS) and modeling approaches identified specific deficiencies in the sanitation infrastructure of slum environments-open sewers, refuse, and inadequate floodwater drainage-that serve as sources for Leptospira transmission. In addition to the environmental attributes of the slum environment, low socioeconomic status was found to independently contribute to the risk of infection. These findings indicate that effective prevention of leptospirosis will need to address the social factors that produce unequal health outcomes among slum residents, in addition to improving sanitation.

Citation: Reis RB, Ribeiro GS, Felzemburgh RDM, Santana FS, Mohr S, et al. (200 Impact of Environment and Social Gradient on Leptospira Infection in Urban Slums. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2(4): e228. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000228

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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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By Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor

(…)  Until that day their home was just downhill from a deep pond of sewage, pumped into a depression in the dunes and held there by earth walls because the water authorities in the Gaza Strip had nowhere else to put it.

‘Wall of human waste’ 

On 27 March 2007, the walls gave way. Aziza heard someone shouting, telling her to run away. She got out of the hut, then went back in because she had forgotten her head covering. The wall of raw human waste slammed into them. It knocked her down and tore the baby from her arms. 

(…)

Read all //news.bbc.co.uk