Bangladesh: microfinance agencies enable entrepreneurs to provide more sanitation technology options

Over the last five years in Bangladesh, more than 90 million people have moved away from open defecation. While 88 percent of the population now have access to, and are using latrines, ensuring the quality and sustainability of these latrines is crucial. Without ready access to micro-credit and in the absence of well marketed technology options, many households are under pressure to move from very low cost to very high cost technology options with a significant debt burden.

In July 2009, the Association for Social Advancement: ASA (a leading Micro-Finance Institute) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dhaka Ahsania Mission (a national non-governmental organization) to provide loans at low interest to local small entrepreneurs for producing, marketing, and promoting appropriate sanitation technology options.

Dhaka Ahsania Mission will pilot the new financing mechanism in Jamalpur Sadar Upazilla (a sub district) with trained entrepreneurs. The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) facilitated this process of linking local private manufacturers with micro-finance agencies to bring finance and technology together to make available a range of affordable sanitation options for households.

Source: WSP Access, Oct 2009

Bangladesh: hygiene promotion for men, WaterAid pictures

Forum theatres are one of WaterAid’s new approaches of improving hygiene in Bangladesh by focusing on men. See below photos of a pilot show in Jogdol bazaar, Magura in west Bangladesh.

Hygiene promotion for men is also being addressed in an EU-funded rehabilitation project in Nepal being carried out by NGO Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH), with support from the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Read more in IRC’s Source Bulletin.

Bangladesh – Full sanitation coverage can reduce all diseases

Speakers at a sanitary latrine distribution ceremony today said the number of water-borne and all other common diseases would be reduced significantly as soon as full sanitation coverage is achieved throughout the country.

They urged all stakeholders, educated and conscious sections of people, public representatives, politicians, civil society members, teachers and students to sanitize every house throughout the country for making a healthy as well as wealthy Bangladesh.

They said this at the distribution ceremony organised by Rural Economic Support and Care for the Under-privileged (RESCU) people on Bahanno Bazaar Non-government Primary School premises in Mithapukur upazila in the district.

A total of 46 sets sanitary latrine materials were distributed among 46 distressed families of Khoragach union of the upazila under the financial assistances of Bangladesh NGO Foundation as part of the government’s ongoing sanitation programme.

Chaired by founder of the non-government primary school Abdul Kader, the ceremony was attended by Executive Director of the RESCU M Fazlul Haque as the chief guest while its executive committee member Alhaj Rafikul Islam attended as the special guest.

Local union member Shaheb Ali, teachers Abdul Alim, Monwara Begum and Mohammad Syed, social worker Abdul Mannan, headmaster Mesbahur Rahman, Branch Manager of the RESCU Ziaur Rahman and its Administrative Officer Ekramul Haque, addressed it.

Source – The New Nation

Bangladesh: School debate on safe water and sanitation

BRAC will organise a countrywide school debate competition as part of its awareness campaign on safe water, sanitation coverage and hygiene practices among the underprivileged population, says a press release. The yearlong competition will begin at upazila level from the middle of May [2009] in cooperation with Brac-WASH and Brac-Advocacy unit.

The objective of the competition is to create awareness among the school students about safe water, sanitation coverage and hygiene practices. The competition will be held in two phases — 1st phase, schools from 24 selected remote upazilas will participate at the selection round and at the 2nd phase, winner teams of selection round will participate at quarterfinal, semi-final and final competition at district level.

Source: The Daily Star, 08 May 2009

India/Bangladesh: PepsiCo Foundation announces grant to Save the Children to improve nutrition and hygiene

The PepsiCo Foundation announced [on 19 February 2009] a three-year, $5 million grant to Save the Children to help ensure the survival and well-being of children living in rural India and Bangladesh, which together are home to 40 percent of the world’s malnourished children.

With support from the PepsiCo Foundation, Save the Children will work towards decreasing newborn and child mortality and child malnutrition in these countries. Save the Children proposes to work with community health educators to provide thousands of families, who are among these countries’ poorest, with important information about health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene. The [project targets] 650,000 children under the age of five, along with mothers and pregnant and lactating women in these two countries.

[...] In India, Save the Children will work through community health groups to decrease newborn and child mortality and malnutrition by increasing use of health services, improving nutrition and hygiene practices and expanding access to safe water and latrines. PepsiCo Foundation has earmarked 2.5 million dollar for India, and would start in [Churu, Tonk and Banswara] districts in Rajasthan. An estimated 50,000 people would be touched through water and sanitation activities across districts in Rajasthan. The programme is likely to cover 65 villages and eight urban wards in the state.

In Bangladesh, local health workers will expand treatment of the most common causes of mortality among children, treat severe malnutrition with ready-to-use food and improve hygiene and sanitation practices. Save the Children also will train families to generate income from local resources, enabling them to provide their children with a more diverse diet.

This grant builds on PepsiCo Foundation’s commitments of more than $4 million for environmental and health programs in India and Bangladesh in 2008.

Source: PepsiCo, 19 Feb 2009 ; PTI / The Hindu, 01 Mar 2009

Bangladesh: Community-Led Total Sanitation – breaking a dirty old habit in Bangladesh

Dinajpur district residents have stopped defecating in the open because of the children’s total sanitation campaign that follows a radical community-led approach.

A procession of children march through a village in Dinajpur demanding an end to open defecation. Photo: Pal Bangladesh

Whistle blowing is a favorite pastime among children in the villages of Dinajpur district in northern Bangladesh. They would blow their whistles when they spot fellow villagers, often adults, defecating in the open, chasing the surprised offenders who would then pull their pants up and attempt to escape the noise and humiliation. [...] Within 6 months, they shamed some 250 people from different villages. Besides the whistling and flag-marking, the children also march around villages, chanting slogans against open defecation (OD), sending a direct message to all villagers about the dirty old habit.

The children’s involvement in this direct action against OD is part of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), “an integrated approach to achieving and sustaining open defecation free status.” The children know that their efforts help protect their own and their communities’ health, and adults include them in community decision-making.

[...] Designed by social development specialist Dr. Kamal Kar, CLTS was introduced by Plan, an international development agency, to some 200 villages in Dinajpur in 2004.

[...] In CLTS, hands-off facilitation is important. The rule of thumb for social development facilitators is to trigger self-realization, and not to lecture. Instant provision of hardware-latrines or toilets-are also discouraged. Villagers have to realize first that the problem is staring at them right in the face. The CLTS approach helps communities recognize that they need such sanitation facilities, that they should mobilize themselves to build their own toilets, and that everyone in the village should contribute to achieve “total sanitation.”

[...] Today, most Dinajpur villages have achieved “open defecation free” (ODF) status and, thanks to Plan’s efforts, a number of villages in several districts have also adopted the CLTS approach.

The children’s campaign is the just the beginning. CLTS allows villagers to generate their own ideas for improvement, take control of development processes and decision-making, and manage and sustain the activities. Often, CLTS has led to improving latrine designs, adopting hygienic practices, managing solid waste and wastewater, protecting drinking water sources, and other environmental activities.

Some villagers, however, can prove to be more difficult than others. Ferdousi said, “Two years to convert everyone is not enough, but we will keep on raising awareness.”

Plan now promotes CLTS in other countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A CLTS Handbook, published in 2008, is also available for social development facilitators.

Related web site: Community-led Total Sanitation – Bangladesh

See also: Whistle blowers put a stop to open defecation, Plan Bangladesh, 28 Mar 2008

Source: Cezar Tigno, ADB, Jan 2009

Bangladesh: Caritas Helps Flood-prone Villagers With Sanitary Facilities, Hygiene Awareness

Samiran Bibi is on the frontline of a Caritas Bangladesh-inspired effort to keep illness at bay in [Tarash], a flood-prone area in northwestern Bangladesh. Each morning the mother of two goes with other members of her Magura Mukundu Dal (village group) to inspect the new toilets in her village in Tarash sub-district, about 150 kilometers northwest of Dhaka.

“Every day we check our village toilets, and see whether the people that use them use soap or ash to clean their hands afterward,” she told UCA News on Dec. 22. They also make sure clean water is on hand.

After two major floods hit the area between July and September in 2007, Caritas Bangladesh launched a special US$2.5-million emergency response program, funded by the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Caritas [...] built 940 new houses, repaired 432 others and installed 2,656 home-based and community latrines. It also drilled 331 new tube wells and examined 2,700 old tube wells for the presence of arsenic or other contaminants in the water, repairing more than 540 of these wells in the process. [T]he houses, toilets and tube wells were constructed on land raised half-a-meter higher than the floodwater level of 2007.

In addition to building these structures, Caritas also [trained] local people like Bibi to [become hygiene promoters]. [...] She said her [village] group learned from Caritas about how their former toilet practices [open defecation, overhung latrines] spread germs and disease, [as well as about food hygiene and water treatment].

Caritas officially ended its involvement in the project on 14 Dec 2008.

Source:  UCAN, 30 Dec 2008

Bangladesh: some 22 million children immunised against polio

Health experts in Bangladesh have successfully immunised 22 million under-five children [or about 97 percent of that age group] against polio. [...] Polio (poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus [that] enters the body through the mouth, or in water or food that has been contaminated with faecal material from an infected person. The disease mainly affects younger children.

“We hope we will be able to make Bangladesh polio-free by 2011,” Salma Begum, a local field worker told IRIN in a suburb of Dhaka, adding that there had not been a single case of polio in the country since November 2006.

Field workers from the government’s health and family planning department, along with 600,000 volunteers administered the oral polio vaccines (OPVs) to children on 29 November at 140,000 sites across the country, followed by a four-day house-to-house search to ensure that no child was left out.

[...] [The immunisation campaign was] part of Bangladesh’s current (17th) national immunisation day (NID), with each one receiving two drops of OPV and a vitamin A capsule as part of the first round of the campaign. Vitamin A is given to children to bolster their immune system against diseases such as measles, diarrhoea and night blindness.

[...] The government of Bangladesh, with support from UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), carried out the campaign.

[...] Bangladesh launched the drive to immunise all under-five children when, after a lapse of five years, a case of polio was detected in March 2006.

[...] Measles and diarrhoea contribute to over 25 percent of deaths among children aged 1-5 in Bangladesh, UNICEF has reported.

Source: IRIN, 01 Dec 2008

Bangladesh: Willingness to pay for sanitation in the BRAC’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme

Bin Seraj, K.F. (2008). Willingness to pay for improved sanitation services and its implication on demand responsive approach of BRAC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme. (RED working paper ; no. 1).  Dhaka, Bangladesh, BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED). 16 p.
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This study aimed to provide some insights into sanitation-related strategies taken by the BRAC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme from an economic point of view. The aim of this report included measuring and identifying the factors that influence willingness to pay for improved sanitation services for the households without any latrine facilities in rural Bangladesh. A contingent valuation survey was carried out in four upazilas under BRAC WASH programme to determine household willingness to pay and affordability to pay for basic sanitary latrine options. The results indicate that about 80% of the households were willing to pay for improved sanitation services. Of the total households who were interested in paying for sanitary latrine about 92% preferred payment in monthly installments. The mean willingness to pay was found to be Tk. 69 if paid monthly installments and Tk. 825 if paid in single payment. The mean willingness to pay for the overall sample size was found to be within the range of 1-2% of the disposable income of the households. Economic hardship was found to be the major reason for not installing sanitary latrine. Health, cleanliness and prestige were found to be three major motivating factors for installing sanitary latrine. Regression analysis using ordered logit model showed that odds for spending money for improved sanitation services were higher for households with better income, households who believed that unsafe sanitation lead to diseases and households belonging to already intervened programme areas. As programmatic implications, this study suggests that credit facilities along with convenient location of the village sanitation centers are necessary to fulfill sanitation-related targets set by the programme. This study has also established a causal relationship between health awareness and willingness to pay for improved sanitation services. However, it was found that even if all the stated conditions are met, there will be some households who would not be able to pay for their latrines and will need some sort of cash incentive or subsidy.

SACOSAN-III concludes with Delhi Declaration; calls for national priority to sanitation

NEW DELHI, Nov 21 (APP): The weeklong Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN-III) concluded here with a unanimous declaration by heads of delegations, calling for national priority to sanitation being basic right of citizens.

“Access to sanitation and safe drinking water is a basic right, and according national priority to sanitation is imperative, says the declaration, urging the governments to ensure a healthy environment with clean air, soil and fresh water resources so that the present and coming generations could enjoy their lives in a better atmosphere.

The document calls for involving all stakeholders at all stages, effective policy making, institutional and fiscal incentives, working in partnership with religious leaders, communities, institutions and local governments and service providers.

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