Sanitation Updates

Teaching children how to stay away from germs can be a powerful tool to help prevent some communicable diseases.

ABOUT 30 minutes into the interview with Cheng Chee Fong, director of a language enrichment centre for children, four-year-old Christopher poked his head into the room. Spotting me, a stranger, he veered a little towards us on his way out of the centre’s washroom trying to figure out what was going on.

But his curiosity did not make him forget to practise the proper hygiene habits ingrained into him by his teachers.

Stealing a glance at us, he picked up a tissue from a basket outside the washroom and wiped his hands, still dripping with water from washing, before throwing the tissue in a wastepaper basket and hurrying off to listen to his teacher tell the story of germs next door.

Read More - thestar

MIR GHULAM SHAH, 3 March 2008 (IRIN) - Until just a year ago Jan Bibi and her five daughters aged 6-18 began their day by getting up before sunrise, walking a couple of hundred metres from their home to a filthy enclosed communal space, digging a small hole and relieving themselves. The alternative was to find some thick bushes and tell someone to watch out for prying eyes.

In this primitive manner the women of Mir Ghulam Shah village in Sanghar District, Sindh Province, 300km east of Karachi, answered nature’s call.

Read More - IRIN

A Powerpoint presentation by Merri Weinger, USAID, given at the Side Meeting on Sanitation, Hygiene and HIV/AIDS Sanitation, Hygiene and HIV/AIDS at the AfricaSan 2008 Conference.

Read the presentation (PDF, 380 KB)

HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR hands?” the headmaster of a primary school in a village in northern Nigeria asked 160 children standing in line one morning before starting class.

“Yes master!” answered the youthful, enthusiastic crowd.
his daily ritual has become a game, said Sani Marafa, the headmaster at the school in Lokoto, a community of some 50 mud and brick houses 20 kilometres from Niger State’s capital, Minna.

“The children weren’t used to washing their hands in the morning,” he explained. “They didn’t know the importance and benefit of using latrines.”

He produced many drawings he uses to explain basic hygiene to students and little games he has devised.

But it is not just games and drawings that have improved the hygiene of Lokoto. Water came to the village in 2003 when the Niger state government, with support from the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), sank two wells in the village.

Read More - IRIN, 18 Feb 2008

At the very least, it makes people stop and stare. The unusual stone monument of a doctor standing 16 feet tall, washing the behind of a half-naked boy atop a toilet bowl, heralds a city’s successful sanitation and hygiene programs.The monument in front of the Palengke ng Marikina near city hall depicts the likeness of Dr. Isaac Eustaquio, the first Filipino to earn a Public Health degree from Harvard University in the United States.

Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando, a former mayor of Marikina and husband of incumbent Mayor Marides Fernando, said the statue reminds residents that the city is one of the cleanest in the country, where everyone values sanitation and personal hygiene.

Read More - The Philippine Star

The lack of clean public facilities in the country attests to the apathy most people feel regarding the issue of toilet cleanliness, according to a concerned group.

“Most Indonesians still look down on toilets although they use them at least five times a day,” said Naning Adisowo, chairwoman of the Indonesian Toilet Association.

“Sorry to say, most toilets in state buildings are badly designed, forcing the user to spray a lot of water,” she said.

She estimated that on average, an Indonesian uses 21 liters of water in the toilet per day.

Read More - The Jakarta Post

In 2007, Catholic Relief Services and the Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP) conducted a workshop in Malawi on the Integration of Water Sanitation and Hygiene into HIV/AIDS Home-Based Care Strategies.

The background and discussion papers, an annotated bibliography and the workshop final report are now posted on the Environmental Health at USAID website.

Sanitation is an essential component of healthy childcare. However, young children do not have good sanitation habits. Germs may abound not only on the toilet seat and flush handle, but also on the sink, trash can lids, and door handles. Children contact germs on their hands, and then spread them from their hands to their mouths as well as to toys and other children. Many diseases such as hepatitis A, hepatitis E, typhoid fever, and giardiasis are spread through the fecal/oral route.

Proper hand-washing is the first step in sanitation and disease prevention. Teach children how to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and running water. Adults also should wash their hands after assisting children with toileting.

Read More - Morning Express

This is the background paper by Christine Sijbesma for the South Asian Sanitation and Hygiene Practitioners’ Workshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 29-31 January 2008. The workshop was organised by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, WaterAid and BRAC.

This background paper focuses on household sanitation. School sanitation has been purposely left out as an area deserving systematic review on its own. The paper gives an overview of what has been achieved in South Asia and what has not, or insufficiently, been addressed. It also identifies four suggested areas for regional cooperation. The overall aim is not only achieving the MDG target of halving the number of people without a sanitary toilet, but universal use and basic hygiene as well as well-sustained facilities and programmes. Fulfilling these aims requires large-scale, cost-effective approaches and validated outcomes.

Read more and download full paper