Sanitation Updates

More than three weeks after Cyclone Nargis tore across Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta, assessments still place the provision of clean water as one of the top priorities for survivors.

The International Federation, in close cooperation with the Myanmar Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) continues to explore ways of trying to meet these needs.

An ICRC water purification unit was deployed to Dedaye, a town in the delta, on 21 May, manned by five Myanmar Red Cross volunteers. The unit has been set up and has started to produce 72,000 litres of water a day.

Read More - ReliefWeb

Cyclone Nargis destroyed not only houses and killed people and livestock. The storm also devastated toilets.

So what? There are other priorities, aren’t there? Food, shelter and clean water are what aid agencies emphasize. But human excrement is a weapon of mass destruction. A gram of human feces can contain up to 10 million viruses. At least 50 communicable diseases — including cholera, meningitis and typhoid — travel from host to host in human excrement.

The priority is containment. That’s as fancy as it sounds: With the water table only 20 centimeters below the surface in Myanmar, it is little use to dig pit latrines, so buckets or tanks for human waste are needed instead. Providing such things is made harder by the refusal of Myanmar’s government to accept help. And it is also hampered by our unwillingness to even talk about it.

Humanitarian aid agencies use the shorthand “watsan” to stand for “water and sanitation.” There’s a reason those two words aren’t in alphabetical order, and it’s not poetry. When it comes to prioritizing aid, water has always received the lion’s share of attention and money.

Read more - Rose George, NYTimes.com

The Coalition for National Unity and Rural Advancement Government would like as many villages as possible in Solomon Islands to have access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation during its term.

Prime Minister, Dr. Derek Sikua, made the statement while addressing villages he visited on North-East Guadalcanal during his current seven-day constituency tour.

Read More - Solomon Times Online

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

Three years ago, residents of coastal and upland villages in San Fernando City polluted their drinking water with their own excreta. Today, they take pains to practice safe hygiene and sanitation. An innocent looking dry toilet (UDDT - urine-diverting dehydration toilet) and an untiring city mayor propelled this shift through a 2-town ecological sanitation pilot project that has evolved into a citywide movement. Can the city carry the momentum forward to the entire province and neighboring towns?

Read more: ADB, Mar 2008

A big housing development project is bringing ecological sanitation toilets that do not require water, to a water-scarce municipality in the northern region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The largest urban project of its kind in the PRC, the project also boasts of an onsite eco-station complete with greywater treatment and thermal composting of organic materials. Will there be enough takers to ensure the sustainability of this project and the concept of ecotown?

The Erdos Eco-Town Project (EETP) - a collaborative enterprise of the Dongsheng District of the Erdos Municipal government, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and a private real estate developer (Daxing Co. Ltd.)- is the world’s first major attempt to build an entire town with onsite ecological sanitation (ecosan).

Read more: ADB, Apr 2008

Below are links to interesting WSP reports from the WSP May 2008 Newsletter:

1 - Title: Lessons from a Low-Cost Ecological Approach to Sanitation in Malawi (pdf, full-text)

Low cost Ecological Sanitation programs in Malawi have led to the building of over 11,000 compostproducing toilets since 2003. While the toilets are affordable and simple to construct, the fact that they convert human waste into valuable odor-free compost, enables cost recovery for households and is a prime driver in popularizing EcoSan designs.

2 - Title: Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Southeast Asia-Summary (pdf, full-text)

This document is published in light of the International Year of Sanitation 2008. It is a summary of a four-country study in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam under WSP’s Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI). This study examines the major health, water, environmental, tourism and other welfare impacts associated with poor sanitation in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. By examining the economic impacts of poor sanitation, and the potential gains from improved sanitation, this study provides important evidence to support the need for investment in sanitation.

3 - Economic Impacts of Sanitation in the Philippines-Summary (pdf, full-text)

This is a detailed individual country report that delves into the major health, water, environmental, tourism and other welfare impacts associated with poor sanitation in the Philippines. The report shows decision makers at the country how the negative impacts of poor sanitation can be mitigated by investing in improved sanitation.

4 - Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Vietnam-Summary (pdf, full-text)

This document looks into the major health, water, environmental, tourism and other welfare impacts associated with poor sanitation in Vietnam. The report shows decision makers in Vietnam how the negative impacts of poor sanitation can be mitigated by investing in improved sanitation.

Coinciding with World Health Day on April 7, Australian Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance Bob McMullan, MP launched Sharing Experiences: Sustainable Sanitation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, a joint publication of WaterAid Australia and the International WaterCentre.

The publication presents nine case studies from: Indonesia, Vietnam, Vanuatu, Fiji, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati.

Key improvements related to the case studies:

• The WSLIC 2 project in Indonesia used a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach which has empowered communities to take collective action to ensure 156,995 people live in villages that are 100% free of open defecation.
• Plan in Vietnam introduced locally produced latrines which reduced household toilet cost by almost 55% and enabled poor farmers to safely reuse human fertilizer for their farms.
• The World Vision project in Vanuatu increased access to sanitation by 25% and made safe water accessible in seven villages. Access to potable water resulted in better diets in households and increased hygiene practices.
• The 3 Delta Towns project in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam used a revolving loan scheme to improve access to household septic tank toilets for 22,500 people.
• The SOPAC Sanitation Park in Fiji showcases a range of sanitation technologies. It has become a training site for local villagers, health workers and students.
• In a record 42 days from the commencement of WaterAID Australia’s pilot CLTS sanitation program in Timor Leste, total sanitation coverage in five target villages was achieved. The success of the program has resulted in an inter-agency workshop and training programs to promote the CLTS approach.
• The ATproject in PNG promoted hygiene among school children and designed and constructed the locally ‘ATloo’ toilets in schools. The positive results of the project sparked a growing interest in the program in other schools and a demand for sanitation in households.
• The World Toilet Organization project in Aceh, Indonesia has used a community toilet and biogas technology to help introduce the concept ecological sanitation whilst restoring normalcy to communities affected by the 2004 Asian Tsunami.
• Ecological sanitation training workshops for communities in the Pacific Islands provided theoretical knowledge and practical skills for the participants, which they passed on to their home island communities in Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Tonga.

Pedi, D. (ed.) (2008). Sharing experiences : sustainable sanitation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Mitcham, VIC, Australia, WaterAid Australia and Brisbane, QLD, Australia, International WaterCentre. 64 p. Download here.

LONDON, April 14

A British-based charity is calling on the Group of Eight summit in Japan later this year to agree to take a global action plan meant to improve water supply and sanitation. WaterAid believes the G-8 summit in Hokkaido in July is the ”last best shot” for raising the issue — which is often overlooked by the aid community, activists say.

The charity wants the G-8 major powers to include the plan in a joint declaration by their leaders, which would see a global taskforce set up to examine progress on sanitation and look at ways of overcoming regional failures.  

(…)     One tactic the group is using is to show how dramatic increases in the standards of public health across East Asia resulted from improved sanitation. On the action plan, Northover said he preferred countries to come up with plans outlining what they need to improve sanitation rather than having specific funding targets and just pumping money into nations from the center. According to the charity, it would cost an extra $10 billion each year until 2015 to reach the Millennium Development Goal. WaterAid is keen to see an increase in budgets to address this problem but the funding needs to be properly targeted.

Kyodo News, Japan

The government is launching a campaign to protect and secure natural resources, such as water, saying climate change is seriously affecting Indonesians’ health and is a burden on the national health system.

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari, speaking during a World Health Day event here Sunday, said, “Climate change is directly and indirectly profoundly affecting people’s health. There are more disease outbreaks and other problems due to the imbalance of the ecosystem.” Siti said the changing climate would cause natural disasters, such as heat waves, floods and drought. Changing temperatures and precipitation might also increase outbreaks of diseases sensitive to the climate, such as malaria, dengue, malnutrition and diarrhea, she said.

“That’s why efforts to improve basic sanitation facilities are needed in dealing with immediate and future health consequences.”  (…)

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta