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

Equity of Access to WASH in Schools: A Comparative Study of Policy and Service Delivery

Equity of Access to WASH in Schools: A Comparative Study of Policy and Service Delivery in Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Uganda and Uzbekistan.

• Full text, pdf

Emory University; Unicef.

EXCERPTS: Understanding the mechanisms by which children are excluded from WASH in Schools is essential to ensuring adequate and equitable access for all school-aged children.

‘Equity of Access to WASH in Schools’ presents findings from a six-country study conducted by UNICEF and the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University. This research was carried out in collaboration with UNICEF country offices in Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Uganda and Uzbekistan and their partners. The six case studies presented together contribute to the broader understanding of inequities in WASH in Schools access by describing various dimensions that contribute to equitable or
inequitable access across regions, cultures, gender and communities.

The researchers identified key dimensions of equity through formative investigations that included discussions with service delivery providers and policymakers. In some countries, inequity existed but was found to be linked to poverty and the prioritization of other health and development objectives, rather than a specific policy. In other cases, some dimensions could not be fully investigated, usually due to lack of data. Because it was not feasible to explore every equity dimension in each of the six countries, focus areas were prioritized for each case study.

Some dimensions were found to be relevant across country contexts. Limited access to WASH in Schools compromised children’s health, educational attainment and well-being, and exacerbated already existing inequities and challenges in each of the countries.

Gender was identified as a key aspect of inequity in all six countries, but the mechanisms and manifestations of gender inequities varied within each context. Menstruating girls in Malawi and Uganda faced consistent challenges in obtaining adequate access to WASH in Schools facilities, preventing them
from comfortably practising proper hygiene. In this context, a lack of access to school WASH facilities is a potential cause of increased drop-out rates. Girls in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were affected by the poor maintenance of facilities and lack of privacy, rather than by overall lack of basic access. In these settings, lack of doors and private latrine stalls, coupled with proximity to boys’ latrines, led to girls avoiding the use of school WASH facilities, which may have deleterious health effects.

Accessibility of WASH facilities for children with disabilities was identified as an issue in all countries. In Malawi and Uganda, concerted effort has been made to include school sanitation, water and hand-washing facilities appropriate for children with disabilities. The designs for facilities, however, were often found to inadequately address students’ needs, and hand-washing facilities remain largely inaccessible, compromising students’ health.

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.

Sustaining sanitation – Pan European Networks interviews Joep Verhagen

In an interview with Pan European Networks, IRC Senior Sanitation Specialist Joep Verhagen explains how sanitation efforts need to begin to increase their focus on sustainability.

EU aid for water and sanitation hit a record €1.6bn in 2009, but in March 2012 the EU announced plans to redirect development to ‘the world’s neediest nations’ with fears that this could harm sanitation efforts in Latin America, Asia and possibly some sub-Saharan African countries. Joep Verhagen shares his thoughts on the EU plans and on how knowledge-sharing partnerships and research are helping to provide sustainable solutions to existing rural and urban sanitation problems.

Read the full interview

Empirical Study of Urban WASH Impacts: Research on the Relationship of Population Density and Neighborhood-Level Sanitation…

Empirical Study of Urban WASH Impacts: Research on the Relationship of Population Density and Neighborhood-Level Sanitation Access to Fecal-Associated Health Impacts

RFA#:WASH2013-001 

• Status:Posted:March 18, 2013
• Questions Due:Monday, April 1, 2013, 5:00pm (EST)
• Applications Due: Monday, April 29, 2013, 5:00pm (EST)

The purpose of this Request for Applications (RFA) is to fund research that will more fully characterize the relative health impact (i.e., diarrheal diseases, STH infections, and anthropometric measures in children) of sanitation coverage in areas marked by high population densities compared to those with lower population densities.

The TRAction Project anticipates making one award not to exceed 2,000,000 USD to achieve the purpose of this RFA.

Results of this research will be shared with national decision-makers, program implementers, researchers, and other stakeholders to promote learning and inform the targeting of sanitation interventions.

Attachment	Size
Appendix E_TEMPLATE SubAgreement Template.pdf	139.19 KB
WASH RFA– Empirical Study of Urban WASH Impacts.pdf	364.74 KB
budget template.xls	153 KB

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

Call for Information and Participation: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and Gender Based Violence

WaterAid is creating a practitioner’s best practice resource to help reduce gender based violence (GBV) related to sanitation, hygiene and water (WASH) in development, humanitarian and transitional contexts. The team is interested to be in contact with any organisation or individual who has material or experience to contribute to the resource; and/or may be interested to co-publish the outputs. The research is being funded by the SHARE Consortium.

The research team are keen to hear from anyone who is interested to contribute to the resource by:

• Identifying what information / elements would be particularly useful to your organisation
• Sharing case studies of GBV and WASH; from experience, or from existing documentation
•  Sharing examples of good practice on programming in relation to GBV and WASH, or examples of programming from other sectors and GBV which could be transferrable to WASH programming or the training of sector professionals
•  Sharing good practice on ways to respond to incidences of GBV in low-income contexts, including any examples of processes where WASH professionals have engaged with protection or GBV professionals

To contribute to the research, for further information or to receive the final outputs of the research please contact (copying in both email addresses):

• Sarah House – sjhouse.majisafi@gmail.com
•  Sue Cavill – gbv@wateraid.org

Related web site: WaterAid – Gender

Dear Matt Damon,

This blog is a response to the video posted by Matt Damon, co-founder of water.org, where he announces a toilet strike to raise awareness for the water crisis.
——-

Dear Matt,

I enjoyed your video on water.org about going on a toilet strike. It is great that you are so passionate about realizing access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene for all. I personally also like it that you bring in some humor into our sometimes very boring sector.

In your video you mention that it costs US$25 to provide a person with sanitation for life. This is not true. Over the past four years IRC’s WASHCost project in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Andhra Pradesh (India) and Mozambique has collected, validated and analysed cost and service level information for water, sanitation and hygiene. Based on this research we know that for US$ 25 you can construct a traditional pit latrine with an impermeable slab which provides a basic service. In order to sustain the service provided by that traditional pit latrine it costs between US$ 1.5 and US$ 4 per person per year – so to provide sanitation for life means finding that US$ 1.5-4 every year …. for life. If you do not know how, or by whom, these recurrent costs will be financed, it is very likely that the latrine you are constructing today will break down or not used within two to three years, wasting your investment.

Plagiarism flushes sanitation paper

Just when another German minister is forced to resign after being accused of plagiarism, two less well-known sanitation scientists have been put to shame for the same offence.

Two scientists from India’s Center for Sustainable Technologies have had their journal article retracted after the publisher, Elsevier, discovered they had plagiarised a Swedish research paper.

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.