Sanitation Updates

Plan UK recently launched a handbook on Community Led Total Sanitation to enable communities analyse their sanitation conditions and collectively understand the impact of open defecation on public health and their environment.

About Community Led Total Sanitation Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an approach that focuses on igniting a change in sanitation behaviour through community participation rather than constructing toilets. It does this through a process of social participation. It concentrates on the whole community rather than on individual behaviours and the collective benefit from stopping open defecation can encourage a more cooperative approach. People decide together how they will create a clean and hygienic environment that benefits everyone.

Read More - Reuters

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

Posted: 01 May 2008, by Lester R. Brown

The Internation Year of Sanitation has called for urgent action urgent action on behalf of the more than 40 per cent of the world s population who continue to live without improved sanitation. But as water scarcity spreads and the cost of water increases, the existing water-based waste disposal is no longer economically or ecologically viable.         (….)

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See also: Earth Policy Institute’s website

You visit a fancy bar. You go to the toilet. As you wash your hands, a man passes over some nice paper towels. He seems to expect a tip. Welcome to one of the UK’s grimmest workplaces.

At 10pm on a Friday, among the drinkers gathering in pubs and bars around the country, Samuel arrives for work.

He unpacks his bottles of soap and cologne, unfolds a chair with a leopard-skin print on the seat, and lays out a silver plate, loading it with half a dozen pound coins.

For the next five hours he will stand guard in the gents’ toilets of a pub in a fashionable district of north London, dispensing paper towels and friendly banter, while subtly manoeuvring punters towards the tips plate. Chances are that later on he will be sworn at; he might face physical aggression. He will probably take home less than £50.

Read More - BBC News

Pupils from a Belfast primary school have been taking part in an innovative project organised by the British Red Cross to mark World Water Day today.

Children from Strandtown Primary have been keeping water diaries detailing each time they have used or come across water during a typical day.

The pupils will compare their diaries with ones completed by schoolchildren in Cambodia where the British Red Cross supports water and sanitation work in schools.

Read More - Belfast Telegraph

With World Water Day being celebrated on 20 March, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) urged governments, businesses and NGOs alike to step up efforts to reduce uncontrolled dumping of waste in rivers - in both poor and rich nations.

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“Sanitation, human health and the environment are inextricably linked. Adequate water supply and sanitation means a clean environment and healthy people,” said Ger Bergkamp, head of IUCN’s Water Programme.

Read More - EurActiv

Bonn, 19.03.2008. Welthungerhilfe is calling for greater measures to improve sanitation and hygiene facilities in international development projects as well as emergency aid. “This isn’t a popular subject,” explains Martin Wolff, Welthungerhilfe’s Programme Manager for Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, “but installing latrines and raising hygiene awareness are essential if people’s health is to improve in developing countries.” In its project countries, Welthungerhilfe makes sure that those who benefit from water installations and sanitary facilities are also those who maintain, repair and administer the amenities.

Read More - Reuters

Improving water supply and sanitation in poor countries is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and reducing poverty. What lessons to help meet this challenge can be learnt from a recent survey of water and sanitation in Kazakhstan?

Research from the University of Nottingham in the UK and the United Nations Development Programme in Kazakhstan reports the findings of a water and sanitation survey carried out in Kazakhstan in 2005.

Target ten of Goal seven of the MDGs is to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, compared with the situation in 1990. Access to clean water and proper sanitation will also be central to meeting MDG targets on reducing poverty and infant mortality.

However, concerns have been raised over the way Target 10 is measured and monitored. The researchers use information from the Kazakhstan survey, which was designed to assess the current level of access to clean water and to provide a baseline for Target 10, to explore some of these concerns.

Read More - id21 Urban Development

A national organisation that supports water and sanitation projects in developing countries is celebrating a move to Loughborough University today (12 March).Partners for Water and Sanitation (PAWS) was established in 2002 in response to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal targets to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation by 2015.

It is a network of UK organisations that work, on a voluntary basis, to help improve access to safe water and sanitation for people living in Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa. PAWS members come from Government, the private sector and civil society, and include water companies, consultancies, development non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Government departments and agencies, law firms and trade unions, as well independent consultants. It is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).

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