Ecological management of human excreta and urine would not only help keep the environment clean and the people safe from many diseases but also meet the entire need of fertiliser for agriculture, a workshop on water supply and ecological sanitation was told in Dhaka yesterday.
The workshop, organised by the Bangladesh Water Partnership (BWP) in observance of the World Water Day 2008, at the LGED auditorium, was attended by leading water experts and representatives of government, non-governmenal organisations and international agencies involved in the water sanitation sector.
In the International Year of Sanitation, Earth Report travels to Bangladesh to discover changing attitudes to hygiene. No more ‘open defecation’: instead of top-down solutions, the new Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach has eradicated open defecation in more than 300 villages. Earth Report investigates. The programme features CLTS guru Kamal Kar. Read the transcript and view a movie clip here.
Clean Living’ is broadcast on BBC World at the following times (all times quoted as UK time zone currently GMT):
Friday 14th March - 20:30, with repeats at 10:30 on Monday 17th March, 15:30 on Tuesday 18th, and 02:30 and 08:30 on Wednesday 19th.
Clean Living was produced with the help of the Department for International Development - Environment, Water & Sanitation, UN Water, UNICEF - Water, Environment and Sanitation, and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).
Kamal Kar also appears in the Plan International video “Bangladesh Community Led Total Sanitation”. In 2004, Plan introduced CLTS in over 200 villages in the Dinajpur District of Bangladesh. By 2007, all villages in Plan’s target area had eliminated open defecation and the entire population now has access to hygienic latrines. The video highlights the crucial role of children and women in CLTS campaigns.
DHAKA, 4 March 2008 (IRIN) - “Half the slum is knee-deep in water during high monsoons. There is no electricity, no water supply. And the worst is that we do not have toilets,” said Tara Mia, a vegetable hawker who lives with his wife and three children in a Dhaka slum.
From 2010-2015 Bangladesh will be aiming at achieving 100 percent sanitation coverage through regular supply of hardware and proper maintenance, coupled with a sustained campaign on hygienic hand-washing habits.
According to the government, the sanitation coverage figure is 85 percent, while a multiple indicator cluster survey conducted in 2006 revealed that 39 percent of people had access to improved sanitation facilities.
“Government figures are giving reasonable estimates of households that have a toilet of some description, but not necessarily conforming to the accepted slab and ring latrine which is a standard of improved sanitation,” Paul Edwards of UNICEF said.
Local and international experts on Tuesday emphasised the need to take appropriate measures to ensure the mass people’s access to hygienic sanitation services, regardless of cost, in Bangladesh and its South Asian neighbors.
“We urgently need to take appropriate measures to face the challenges of improving the culture of hygiene practice…as two-third of the people of the country are still excluded from hygienic sanitary services,” said the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee’s executive director, Mahabub Hossain, while inaugurating a three-day workshop on ‘South Asian sanitation and hygiene practitioners.
Fifty-three persons from four countries — Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan — were participating in the workshop at the BRAC CDM in Gazipur. Mahabub Hossain said that only 39 per cent of the people are using sanitary latrines although the country started a national sanitation campaign ‘Sanitation for All by 2010′, whose deadline is only two years from now.
News and Resources for 2008 International Year of Sanitation
Maintained by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, USAID’s Environmental Health knowledge management activity and the Hygiene Improvement Project.
