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.
Posted in Campaigns and Events, Hygiene Promotion, South Asia
Tagged Bangladesh, BRAC, BRAC WASH II programme, handwashing, videos
On WaterCouch.tv, Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp shares a practical example of international water cooperation that emerged during the 2013 World Water Day celebrations in The Hague, The Netherlands. In one of the sessions, BRAC WASH programme director Dr Babar Kabir explained that his programme had trained 18,000 imams in Bangladesh to include hygiene messages in their Friday prayers (see Kabir, 2010).
Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi
Also present in The Hague was Iman Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, Chief Imam of the All India Organization of Imams of Mosques, “the largest and oldest imam organization of the world”. Dr Kabir and the Chief Imam “agreed to cooperate on education for water and sanitation”. This cooperation has the potential to create “five hundred thousand new teachers” to spread hygiene messages all over India.
Kabir, B. et al., 2010. The role of imams and different institution[s] in hygiene promotion of BRAC WASH programme : paper presented at the South Asia Hygiene Practitioners Workshop, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1 to 4 February 2010. The Hague, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at: www.irc.nl/page/51613
WASH training for imams in Bangladesh. Photo: Masjid Council
In a new video, Mayadevi and Kaman (Nepal), Toan and Thinh (VietNam) and Tshering, Drukda, Tashi and Deschen (Bhutan) share stories about women’s participation, leadership and their changing roles in promoting sanitation and hygiene in Nepal, Bhutan and Viet Nam.
The video is from SNV’s Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All Programme (SSH4A), which has been implemented by local governments and partners in 17 districts across Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia since 2008. It aims to provide one million people with access to improved hygiene and sanitation facilities by the end of 2015. As the approach aims at addressing access to sanitation for all, addressing gender issues and inequalities is key.
SSH4A is a partnership between SNV, the Governments of the Netherlands, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia in Asia and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with support from AusAID and DFID.
Learn more about SSH4A at www.snvworld.org/node/3779 and www.irc.nl/ssh4a
In Bangladesh, IRC is supporting BRAC to measure behavioural change in the BRAC WASH II programme. Christine Sijbesma of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and Mahjabeen Ahmed of the BRAC share their thoughts and experiences with monitoring sanitation and hygiene behaviour of women in the programme in a recent blog post [1].
The QIS monitoring system that is being used gives special attention to gender and sanitation. First because many of the indicators differentiate between women and men. Secondly because data collection for each sample is duplicated by a male and a female monitoring team. Interestingly, preliminary results show that virtually all the male and female monitoring teams members gave the same scores for the gender indicators.
[1] Bangladeshi women catch up on sanitation, IRC, 08 March 2013
Over the last few weeks and months, people at BRAC in Bangladesh and at IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in The Netherlands have been working really, really hard to prepare for our first Monitoring and Learning workshop that will happen at the end of February. Exciting, and frankly, a bit daunting to complete the full circle of planning, implementation, monitoring and learning, and adaptation for the BRAC WASH programme that covers half of Bangladesh and seeks to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people.
Low cost latrines constructed by the Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP) in Bangladesh performed well in their first real flood test.
After the July 2012 floods, which also hit the CLP programme area in the districts of Jamalpur and Kurigram on the northern Jamuna, only 14% of the low cost latrines were destroyed or unusable. During the flooding, recipients continued to have access to sanitation.
Low cost latrines raised above flood levels. Photo: CLP
Households in CLP districts are raised on earthen plinths 60 cm above the highest known flood level. The Programme ensures access to clean water and sanitation by also raising water points and installing latrines on plinths.
Consultant-led sanitation marketing surveys typically take months to produce a thick report with largely impractical recommendations.
The IRC International Water and Sanitation is developing a field tool that delivers, within just one week, a one-page overview matching sanitation supply and demand.
The tool, a sanitation marketing dashboard, was tested in two unions in one of the upazilas (sub-districts) covered by the BRAC WASH II programme.
Preliminary results revealed for instance that the quality of construction and hygiene promotion needed improvement.
An updated version of the tool will be used in six to nine representative upazilas in the BRAC WASH II programme.
For more information contact: Erick Baetings or Ingeborg Krukkert at IRC.
IRC-BRAC WASH II
Sanitation Demand and Supply Study
Source: Erick Baetings, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
Study reveals impact of combined water and sanitation interventions in rural Bangladesh | Source: ICDDRB, Jan 25, 2013
A study by icddr,b researchers has demonstrated how combined water and sanitation interventions can significantly improve basic hygiene practices in rural communities. This and other encouraging findings were shared during a seminar organised by icddr,b on Thursday, 24th January 2013 in the Sasakawa Auditorium.
Findings of the pilot study carried out in low income communities in central Bangladesh, where handwashing with soap and treating drinking water were not commonly practiced, show that hand washing with soap jumped from 17 to 75% after rural communities received a combination of health messages and tailor-made hardware. 
Some of the specially built products distributed amongst the target groups were handwashing stations (large plastic containers with a tap), which they could use to store clean water and soap, enabling them to wash hands, custom built hoes to remove human and animal waste, potties for children, and products such as soapy water made with detergent and chlorine tablets.
Linking behaviour change to improved hygiene
Behavioural change communication was a key strategy of the pilot study, and demonstrated how an effective combination of activities, supporting materials and trained and motivated promoters can change people’s behaviour and eventually people’s lives. Young children and their mothers were the primary target audience during this trial, followed by fathers and caregivers of young children and then neighbouring households in the same compound and the larger community.
ICDDRB Health & Science Bulletin, 10(4) Dec 2012
Small-scale studies have shown that intensive hand washing promotion reduces disease, but there is little evidence that largescale hand washing promotion programs change behaviour. We deployed a community-based hand washing promotion intervention and used the presence of water and soap or soapy water at hand washing stations as a proxy indicator for hand washing behaviour and found encouraging results. A cluster randomized cholera vaccine trial conducted in a low-income urban area of Dhaka included those who received the vaccine only (Vaccine Only group), those who received the vaccine and a hand washing and water treatment intervention (Vaccine+HWT group), and those who were neither vaccinated nor received the intervention (Control group). Among the Vaccine+HWT group, the presence of water and soap or soapy water at the hand washing place increased from 22% (41/190) at baseline to 60% (102/171) at the 11-month assessment point (p<0.001). We found no significant increase in the presence of water and soap or soapy water among the Control group or the Vaccine Only group during the same period.
Our findings suggest that hand washing behaviour changed following implementation of a large-scale intervention in a low-income urban setting that provided hardware to enable hand washing and encouraged regular hand washing. Further research on health impact of hand washing with soap in this community and the sustainability of using soapy water could help optimize recommendations for improving hand washing practices in other low-income communities.
IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:
Low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high water tables
This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.
The planned duration of the research project will be 18 months.
The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).
Download the BRAC Call Applicants Guide
Download the Application form
Application forms should be sent to bracactionresearch@irc.nl
The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 18 February 2013.
Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.
Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.
Handwashing with soap before handling a child’s food is critical to child health and nutrition. Alive & Thrive, the Institute of Public Health Nutrition, and the Department of Public Health Engineering launched a campaign in Bangladesh linking handwashing and adequate, appropriate, and safe complementary feeding. 
Materials include a summary of the handwashing initiative, an advocacy brief, TV spot, poster, job aid, and reminder sticker.
Posted in Hygiene Promotion, South Asia
Tagged Alive & Thrive, Bangladesh, handwashing, Nutrition
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