WSA signs up with Malaysian firm for technical support on sanitation

Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysian firm Indah Water Konsortium Sdn Bhd for technical know-how and consultancy services in sewerage management in African countries.

WSA selected Indah Water “to be in a technical committee formed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to propose immediate, medium- and long-term solutions for sanitation services in WSA member countries”. In 2011-2012 WSA received three Gates Foundation grants totalling US$ 7.2 million, one of which to develop sanitation financing models for urban poor and another to set an African Sanitation Think Tank.

Chief Executive Officer Datuk Abdul Kadir Mohd Din said that the Gates Foundation “had sent a team of wastewater experts from the United States to visit Indah Water after visiting the African continent and Asean countries”.

Indah Water is Malaysia’s national sewerage company. In 1994, the Federal Government awarded the company the concession for nationwide sewerage services which before were the responsibility of local authorities.

Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA) is a Pan African Inter-governmental Agency based in Burkina Faso, previously known as the African Regional Centre for Water and Sanitation (CREPA). WSA has a presence in 32 African countries.

Source: Bernama, 16 May 2013

Kiribati’s North Tarawa declared first open defecation free island in the Pacific

Everyone on North Tarawa now has access to improved sanitation. Photo: ABC Radio Australia / UNICEF Pacific.

North Tarawa in Kiribati is the first island in the Pacific to be declared open defecation free, thanks to the “Kiriwatsan I Project”. The Ministry of Public Works is implementing this project with technical support from UNICEF and funding from the European Union.

North Tarawa is made up of a string of islets with a combined population of 6,102 (2010) and a land area of 15.26 sq.km.  Previously about 64 per cent of people used the beaches and mangroves for defecation and dumping their rubbish.

UNICEF spokeswoman Nuzhat Shahzadi says that diarrhoeal diseases cause 15 per cent of the deaths of children under five in Kiribati.

In March 2013, North Tarawa adopted the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach following a training of trainers course conducted by Dr Kamal Kar. The CLTS pioneer wrote that he had convinced Kiribati President Anote Tong to set December 2015 as the target date for the whole nation to become open defecation free.

The villagers of North Tarawa dig shallow pits and use local materials like brick and coconut leaves to build the toilet superstructure. They keep water and soap in one corner. After using the toilet, the villagers sprinkle ash to stop the smell and flies getting in, and then keep it covered.

Ms Shahzadi said that the women and girls were very happy that no longer have to go out on the beach in the middle of the night if they need to use the toilet.

Source: UNICEF, 11 May 2013 ; Radio New Zealand International, 13 May 2013 ; ABC Radio Australia, 14 May 2013

India, Bihar: rapes ’caused by lack of toilets’

Map showing frequency & severity of violence against
women in Bhalswa slum, Delhi. Shirley Lennon/SHARE.

The lack of safe toilets for women and girls is often linked to an increased risk of sexual harassment and rape. Earlier studies [1] from Kenya, Uganda and India, and now a recent BBC news item are some of the few sources to actually quantify this risk.

Senior police official Arvind Pandey from the Indian state of Bihar told the BBC that 400 women would have “escaped” rape in 2012 if they had toilets in their homes. The rapes take place when women go outside to defecate early in the morning and late evening. These “sanitation-related” rapes make up nearly half of the more than 870 cases of rape in Bihar in 2012.

The BBC news item lists three specific cases:

• On 5 May, an 11-year-old girl was raped in Mai village in Jehanabad district when she was going to the field at night
• On 28 April, a young girl was abducted and raped when she had gone out to defecate in an open field in Kalapur village in Naubatpur, 35km (21 miles) from the state capital, Patna
• On 24 April, another girl was raped in similar circumstances on a farm in Chaunniya village in Sheikhpura district. She told the police that two villagers had followed and raped her. One of them has been arrested

In Bihar , 75.8% of homes have no toilet facilities (Census 2011). Some 49% of the households without a toilet wanted one for “safety and security” for women and children, according to a study by Population Service International (PSI),   Monitor Deloitte and Water for People.

[1] Heise, L., 2013. Danger, disgust and indignity : women’s perception of sanitation in informal settlements. Powerpoint presented at “Making connections: Women, sanitation and health”, 29 April 2013, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Video version available at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS9ulpJqh7s

Related news:

• Request for Proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on women and girls in India, Sanitation Updates, 07 Mar 2013
• India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation, E-Source, 27 Mar 2012

Source: Amarnath Tewary, BBC, 09 May 2013

 

Sri Lanka: new partnership tackles fecal sludge management

Septage disposal. Sri Lanka/Nuwara Eliya sanitation project, 2008, Photo: Flickr/USAID.

An international research institute is helping the government of Sri Lanka to improve septage management in the country.

On 8 May 2013, the Colombo-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides a collaborative framework for sustainable septage management in Sri Lanka.

IWMI will contribute research data for the drafting of a septage management component of the national sanitation policy. The Ministry will lead implementation of the policy through an advisory committee headed by Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.

Only about 3% of Sri Lankans have a sewerage connection while the rest rely on latrines and septic tanks for sanitation. Safe disposal of septage (fecal sludge) is a problem because of a lack of treatment facilities in large parts of the country.

IWMI is studying a new approach in cities around the world, which treats the sludge so that it can be safely reused as agricultural fertiliser. With the rising costs of imported fertiliser, such an approach would not only benefit farmers but also allow better sanitation and environmental protection for all.

Related news:

• The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India), E-Source, 27 Sep 2012
• WASHplus Weekly: Focus on Fecal Sludge Management, Sanitation Updates, 30 Nov 2012

Related web sites:

• IWMI - Resource Recovery and Re-use
• Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage
• SuSanA - WG 5 – Food security and productive sanitation systems and Library – Fecal sludge management

 Source: IWMI, 8 May 2013

Sanitation promotion history: US New Deal posters

Posted created in 1940 by John Buczak for the US Federal Art Project. Collection Library of Congress

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the US Government launched a series of economic programmes collectively known as the New Deal. The largest  of these programmes, run by WPA, the Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration), employed millions of unemployed people to carry out public works projects. Most famous was the WPA Federal Art Project (FAP) that employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

The FAP created over 200,000 separate works including 2,000 posters. Shown  here are several posters promoting sanitation and hygiene from the WPA poster collection of the Library of Congress.

Save Lives, Clean your Hands – BRAC video

The BRAC WASH programme in Bangladesh has produced a new handwashing promotion video. It shows slides of handwashing promotion sessions for different groups (children, adolescent girls, women, men), as well as for schools, village WASH committees and mosques (imams).

The video was released on 5 May to coincide with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual global campaign  to promote better hand hygiene in health care.

 

 

Educational cartoon boosts worm infection prevention

Cover of the Cartoon “The Magic Glasses.

Educational cartoon boosts worm infection prevention | Source: News-Medical, Apr 29, 2013 |

Researchers in China have found that a health education package targeted at schoolchildren can improve hygiene behaviors and reduce the incidence of soil-transmitted helminth infection.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 1718 school children aged 9 to 10 years, of whom 893 attended control schools (n=19), and 825 attended intervention schools (n=19). The research was conducted in rural Linxiang City District, Hunan province, where there is a high prevalence of helminth infection but limited awareness or educational activity about the risks.

Both control and intervention schools displayed an awareness poster. However, in the intervention schools, students also took part in an educational package, including a 12-minute cartoon promoting knowledge and prevention awareness, followed by classroom discussions. They also took part in drawing and writing competitions that reinforced the cartoon’s messages, and received a pamphlet summarizing the main points. All students received albendazole treatment at baseline.

Latinosan Panamá 2013 – 3rd Latin American Sanitation Conference, 29-31 May 2013

The Republic of Panama is organizing the Third Latin American Sanitation Conference on 29-31 May 2013. The theme is:  “Universal Sanitation: New Challenges, New Opportunities”.

Latinosan is held every three years.

Latinosan 2013 consists of two events: a technical conference and a meeting of senior officials that will result in the Declaration of Panama.

Main topics:

• the status of sanitation at regional and country levels
• institutions and public policy
• human rights and sustainable development
• post-2015 goals: regional and global

For more information visit the conference website: latinosanpanama2013.com (Spanish only)

RFP: Research for Hygiene Behavioural Change among School Children in the Philippines

UNICEF has issued a request for proposal for “Research for Hygiene Behavioural Change among School Children in the Philippines”.

The aim of the consultancy to “craft a simple, scalable and sustainable strategy, program and tools based on the EHCP [Essential Health Care Program] that would lead to improved and sustained hygiene practice and toilet use”.

The EHCP is the Department of Education’s “flagship national health program for promoting group handwashing with soap, group toothbrushing with toothpaste and biannual deworming in public elementary schools”.

The consultancy will build on the findings of the Sustainable Sanitation in Schools Project, which was launched in 2011 by UNICEF, GIZ and Fit for School.

The main research question is: “Does daily group hand washing with soap in school result in the independent practice of hand washing with soap at critical times, particularly after using the toilet in school and before eating/handling food?”

Project Duration: 12 months (May 1, 2013 – April 30, 2014)

Deadline for submission: 10:00 am (GMT) on Monday, 15 April 2013

For more information read the full RFP.

India, New Delhi: garbage trucks to be fitted with GPS and radio devices

Big brother will soon be watching over garbage truck drivers in East Delhi once the local municipal corporation installs an electronic tracking system. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) plans to install global positioning system (GPS) and radio frequency identification devices (RFID) in its garbage trucks.

This will enable the EDMC to track the garbage trucks movements and monitor their work performance.

The electronic devices are linked to an  ‘e-municipal solid waste disposal system’, which takes pictures of the vehicles at the garbage station and landfill site, when they pick up and dispose of the waste.

At the end of each day, the GPS will be used to submit a daily route mapping report on the areas cleaned.

East Delhi generates nearly 2,000 metric tonnes of garbage every day and has nearly 150 dump yards.

M/s AKS Software Ltd won the tender to install the electronic tracking system, which costs 19.2 million Rupees (US$ 353,000).

Related news: India, New Delhi: using Facebook and SMS to keep the city clean, Sanitation Updates, 15 Apr 2011

Source: Hindustan Times, 28 Mar 2013 ; PTI/Business Standard, 28 Mar 2013