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

Ghorahi: A dalit [low caste] settlement in Aspari of Dhikapur-6 is becoming a model in the district in terms of sanitation. All the households in the settlement have constructed concrete toilets after the Drinking Water and Sanitation Division Office Dang provided loan assistance to construct toilets.

A local Sita Ram Bika said, “We used to defecate in roads and lanes only in the mornings or night due to financial crisis to construct toilet.” “We got great relief after construction of toilets. Now we can defecate whenever we like,” said Pyari Lal Bika, a local.

Read more: Rajdhani / NGO Forum, May 4, 2008

Hetauda: The Water Treatment Plant, constructed two years ago by Environment Area Assistance Programme (ESPS)* with financial aid worth Rs. 550 million from the Danish Government, is not in full operation. Only 15 per cent capacity of the treatment plant is under operation as some of the big industries producing wastewater in the industrial area are closed and some industries have not constructed underground sewerage to send their wastewater in the plant. Most of the industries connected with the plant produce little wastewater.

Read more: Kantipur / NGO Forum, 23 Apr 2008

* “Environment Sector Programme Support (ESPS) came to an end on 30 June 2005 as the government to goverment agreement expired. However, Danida confirmed its support for the operation and maintenance of Waste Treatment Plant (WWTP) and Air Quality Management (AQM) Components of ESPS in a sliding scale of 70%, 50% and 30% for their sustainability for the period of three years i.e. until February 2009″. [Source: Embassy of Denmark, Kathamandu]

Jalilpur (Chandauli), May 12. In the era of gram pradhans owning palatial houses and zipping in snazzy MUVs, the head of this village lives in a rented house. And despite international renown, he has not even a cycle of his own.

Sri Prakash Singh (51) is a clutter-buster. Not just of this village 15 kms from Varanasi, but also for experts in at least 20 countries. And he is responsible for ushering in a revolution of total cleanliness and sanitation.

A science graduate, he has made Jalilpur of Chandauli globally famous by ensuring that every village in the house has a toilet.

Read More - expressindia

Efforts afoot to observe IYS 2008, implement Sanitation Policy, ISLAMABAD, May 10 (APP):

Ministry of Environment in collaboration with partners like UNICEF and WSP-SA is devising a strategy to observe 2008 as International Year of Sanitation. Number of activities are going on side by side effective implementation of National Sanitation Policy devised in 2006 as well as provincial strategies to enhance sanitation cover in the country  (…)

Read all Associated Press of Pakistan

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, India, revealed in an interview published in April 2008 in the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) “Water Champion” series, that his organisation plans to open branches in 50 countries. Sulabh has already constructed and is maintaining public toilets in Afghanistan and Bhutan and has provided training to professionals in 15 African countries, Dr. Pathak said. Other plans include publishing Sulabh literature in all the 22 languages of India, and distributing 5 books each to 600,000 villages.

Sulabh International is well known for pioneering the “Sulabh Shauchalaya”, a self-composting two-pit, pour-flush toilet, and for liberating scavengers or “night soil workers”.

Total sanitation in action:

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How did you provide sanitation coverage for all the 12 villages under your Chakchaka GP? 

It was not easy at all. We made it mandatory for all residents of this GP to ensure that there were sanitary toilets in their dwellings and they use only those. To get any certificate or facilities from the panchayat office they must satisfy us first. We are still following this procedure. We did graffiti on walls and intensive campaigning on sanitation. Sanitary toilet facilities were extended to 17 primary schools, two high schools and 27 Anganwadi centres. We also provide disinfectants to schools. To make the environment clean in Chakchaka Industrial Growth Centre complex we took up a social forestry scheme and planted more than 25,000 trees at Chapaguri. We did all these with our own funds.   (…)

Read all thestatesman.net

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

The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the revered Ganges, but its polluted waters pose an increasing health hazard to the Indian capital. Now campaigners are calling for urgent action to clean it up.

The Yamuna, which passes through Delhi, represents both a terrible irony and one of India’s great unsung scandals. The largest tributary of the revered Ganges, the Yamuna is one of the country’s most sacred rivers, and yet perhaps also its dirtiest. Hundreds of millions of pounds of public and private money has been spent on projects to clean the river and yet where it passes Delhi it is dark, stinking and lifeless - as dead as a handful of ashes.

“It’s a terrible irony. In the Hindu religion we are supposed to venerate rivers. The Yamuna is one of the most worshipped,” said Vimlendu Jha, who heads a campaign group called We For Yamuna. “And yet every day 950 million gallons of sewage is pumped into the river. The faecal coliform [bacteria from human waste] count is 100,000 times what is considered safe for bathing… No politician wants to do anything. It has gone from bad to worse.”

Read more: Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, 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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