USAID RFA – Research on the Relationship of Population Density and Neighborhood-Level Sanitation

Research on the Relationship of Population Density and Neighborhood-Level Sanitation Access to Fecal-Associated Health Impacts 

• RFA #: WASH2013-001
• Status: Upcoming
• Posted: February 25, 2013
• Questions Due: Comments Due: March 11, 2013

TRAction is anticipating the release of an RFA to support research on the relationship between population density and the impact of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions on diarrhea and other fecal-associated infections.

Before releasing the RFA for applications, TRAction is asking for program implementers, researchers, and others knowledgeable about the WASH field to provide comments on the RFA. Comments may address other relevant background information or resources that could be included in the RFA, suggestions on research questions or design, application guidelines, or other RFA components that could benefit from a suggested revision.

• RFA and additional information

SHARE – Request for proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India

Feb 21, 2013 – The SHARE Research Consortium is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for research into the effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India. Proposals must be led or co-led by an Indian research institution and must address at least one of the following questions:

• Psycho-social stress resulting from violence experienced by women in the course of using sanitation facilities or practicing open defecation.
• Operational research into menstrual hygiene management or determining the link between menstrual hygiene and infections.
• The practice of limiting, postponing or reducing food and liquid intake to control the urge to urinate or defecate: the prevalence of this behaviour and related health risks.

The deadline for submission of proposal is 17:00 GMT on 15 March 2013.

• For full details please refer to the RFP document

Email: aurelie.jeandron@lshtm.ac.uk

Sanitation and nutrition

In the scramble for attention in post-2015 development agenda discussions, WaterAid and the SHARE programme are highlighting the role of WASH in combating malnutrition. “A successful global effort to tackle under-nutrition must include WASH” is the headline in their new briefing note.

Mentioned in the note, and of special interest, is the forthcoming Cochrane review on “Interventions to improve water quality and supply, sanitation and hygiene practices, and their effects on the nutritional status of children” (DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD009382).

In the wake of the WaterAid/SHARE briefing note, a new World Bank report on sanitation and stunting [1] is ”getting a lot of attention from our nutrition colleagues”, says Eddy Perez of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in an email.

SACOSAN-V – South Asian Conference on Sanitation, 11-13 November 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal

Heads of delegation from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will join other delegates from government, UN agencies, civil society and private sector to once again discuss the “biggest sanitation challenge in the world”.

There are around 700 million South Asians who still defecate in the open. At SACOSAN-IV held in April 2011 in Sri Lanka, South Asian ministers promised to set up a national body in each country to “coordinate sanitation and hygiene, involving all stakeholders”.

SACOSAN-V is being organised by the Nepal Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS).

The SACOSAN-V theme is: ”Sanitation for All : All for Sanitation”.

Programme outline: Public Opening (10 November), Meeting of Ministers, Technical focus sessions, Plenaries, Public sessions, Panel discussions, Declarations, Exhibitions, Field visits (14 November).

Session topics (Download Concept Paper):

Topic	Lead Country	Partner involved
Sanitation and Health	Afghanistan	UNICEF
Community Wide Sanitation and Sustainability	Bangladesh	WSP
School Sanitation	Bhutan	WHO
Reaching the Unreached	India	FANSA
Sanitation Technology and Marketing	Maldives	WHO
Media Advocacy and Sanitation	Nepal	WaterAid
Urban Sanitation	Pakistan	WaterAid
Knowledge Management and Networking	Sri Lanka	UNICEF

For more information go to: www.sacosanv.gov.np

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: Burera District, Rwanda

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: A Case Study in the Burera District, Rwanda, 2012.

• Link to full text, (pdf)

Nelson Ekane, Madeleine Fogde, Marianne Kjellén and Stacey Noel. Stockholm Environment Institute.

In Rwanda, sanitation and hygiene are high on the government’s development agenda, and it prescribes a range of guidelines and standards for toilet technologies appropriate for different regions. This working paper presents these prescribed guidelines and standards, specifically those pertaining specifically to urine diversion dry toilets (UDDTs), as well as those on the use of treated human excreta as fertilizer, and on pit latrines (“drop and store”). It then describes how these guidelines and standards are enforced at the community level – specifically in the Rugarama sector, Burera District – and presents the prevailing sanitation and hygiene norms and practices, moving on to discuss how and why the prescribed guidelines and standards match or do not match prevailing practices. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Rwanda is carrying out a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the dostrict of Burera and three other districts in the country.

This study shows that health, hygiene, convenience, and safety aspects of sanitation in the study area remain unsatisfactory, and are not aligned with national guidelines and standards. Most of the toilets in these communities are neither properly constructed nor properly used. Reasons for the contradictions between prevailing practice and national guidelines and standards include the following: people do not place a high priority on toilets; financial constraints limit household investment in toilets; there is a lack of proper understanding of prescribed sanitation and hygiene guidelines and standards; and there are challenges in carrying out sanitary inspections. For the productive sanitation system in particular, poor understanding of how the system works was identified as the main cause of the mismatch between standards and practice. This study posits that a common understanding of prescribed guidelines and standards at all levels of society is vital to ensure health and safety, improved livelihoods, and to maintain minimum hygiene and sanitation standards.

Why Toilets, Not Cell Phones, Are Key To Education Around The World

Why Toilets, Not Cell Phones, Are Key To Education Around The World Source: Forbes, Denise Restauri, Contributor, Jan 3, 2012

John Kluge’s Twitter profile: “Social Entrepreneur, Philanthropunk, Toilet Hacker, Co-Founder of Eirene, Resident Fellow @ewinstitute, Co-author Charity & Philanthropy for Dummies – New York City.” As co-Founder of Eirene, the for-profit angel firm, John only supports initiatives that will impact at least 1 billion people. First up: provide 1 million toilets to the developing world.  

John Kluge, A Committed Toilet Hacker

John Kluge says things many people want to say, but don’t because they think it’s taboo. Kluge is out to change that. His “Give a Sh*t Manifesto” starts with BE THANKFUL. YOU HAVE A TOILET. 2.5 BILLION DO NOT. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS SH*T. While others whisper the word “sanitation,” John and Co-Chief Toilet Hacker, Michael Lindenmayer say it boldly. Their stickers shout out: “Disrupt SH*T” and “Poop is POWER.” With support from their partners including the World Bank, Water for People, and UNICEF– these two toilet hackers are taking on the giant-sized challenge to develop breakthrough innovations for improving access to sanitation for the world’s poor.

Kenya: Human waste woes in slums

Kenya: Human waste woes in slums

NAIROBI/KISUMU, 27 December 2012 (IRIN) – The odour of human waste is unbearable at the pit latrine behind Nancy Anyango’s house in Manyatta, a sprawling slum in the western Kenya city of Kisumu. Nearby, a heap of rotting garbage lies between long rows of shacks. From a distance, one can hear the flies buzzing.

Photo: Dara Lipton/The Advocacy Project -
A stream in the Kibera slum is used as a dump site for trash and human waste

The open pits exacerbate the threat of disease. They are also a physical risk for children. Only a couple of months ago, Anyango lost her three-year-old son when he fell into one of them while playing with other kids.

“The waste produces a pungent smell, and when it rains, it floods our houses, and we are forced to move out. The lives of our children, too, are in danger because they play inside the filth,” Anyango told IRIN.

Risks to residents

Local government authorities put the slum’s population at 45,000, but they are served by no more than 30 pit latrines. And because people are charged a fee to use the latrines, many opt defecate in the open instead.

Impact of Infectious Diseases on Cognitive Development in Childhood and Beyond: Potential Mitigational Role of Hygiene

The Open Infectious Diseases Journal, 2012, 6, 65-70

Impact of Infectious Diseases on Cognitive Development in Childhood and Beyond: Potential Mitigational Role of Hygiene

• Full text, pdf

M. Khalid Ijaz and Joseph R. Rubino

Enteric infections in the early years of childhood can exacerbate underlying malnutrition and, if not addressed, can lead to a vicious and synergistic cycle of malnutrition-enteric infection-malnutrition. Cognitive impairment is a key detrimental outcome associated with this cycle of malnutrition and enteric infection. Mechanistically, diversion of metabolic resources away from the developing brain under conditions of nutritional stress may underlie the impairment of cognitive function. Evidence indicates that the effects of the synergy between malnutrition and enteric pathogens last far beyond the time of infection and can lead to long-term effects on cognition. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests a potential for later-life vulnerability to neurodegenerative diseases as a consequence of enteric infectious diseases on early-life brain development. Simple interventions for improving hygiene have proven to lessen the burden of enteric infectious disease. The mitigational role of good hygiene practices has the potential to break the vicious cycle of malnutrition and enteric infection, and contribute to improving the cognitive development potential of children at risk.

UNICEF – Community case management of diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia

Community case management of diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia: Tracking science to policy and practice in sub-Saharan Africa, 2012.

• Full text, pdf

UNICEF

Community case management (CCM) increases access to treatment to those beyond the reach of health facilities and has the potential to more equitably address the three largest causes of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia.

Based on data from UNICEF country offices, we provide a profile of government policies and implementation of CCM diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria for sick children aged 2 months-5 years across sub-Saharan Africa in 2010. This offers an aggregated analysis and disaggregated tables for subSaharan Africa and where possible we explain the status of outliers based on correspondence with UNICEF country offices. We also compare our findings with previous data collected by Countdown 2015 to describe trends in CCM pneumonia policy and implementation for sub-Saharan Africa. The following bullet points represent key findings.

• The majority of governments in sub-Saharan Africa have policies supporting CCM of diarrhea, malaria or pneumonia, yet important exceptions remain. Moreover, even when supportive CCM policies exist, CCM programs are not always implemented, and far fewer are implemented at scale.
• Even as CCM pneumonia lags the furthest behind, significant change has occurred. The number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa with supportive CCM pneumonia policies has more than doubled since 2005.
  

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