UN-Water Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS)

The Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) is a UN-Water pilot initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO). UN-Water GLAAS constitutes a new approach to reporting on progress in the sanitation and drinking-water sectors that aims to strengthen evidence-based policy-making towards and beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Read all and down load the report

Cholera outbreak spreads in Iraq

Babel, a central Iraqi province, is on alert after Iraqi authorities declared it a disaster zone marking the country’s latest cholera outbreak. (…)

In a statement released on Thursday, WHO officials said “Experience has shown that long-term prevention of cholera depends on access to safe water and adequate sanitation to prevent exposure and interrupt transmission.

“Improving water and sanitation infrastructures is therefore a long-term goal of WHO and its partners in Iraq and, in times of outbreaks, it is essential that immediate measures, such as water treatment at household level, health education and proper case management, are implemented rapidly,” the statement said. (…)

Read all AlJazeera.net

UK: Wash your hands, NHS staff reminded

03 September 2008 

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) is reinforcing its message to NHS staff to clean their hands at the point of care, with the reissue of its alert on hand hygiene.

(…) In addition, the advice includes the internationally recognised World Health Organization (WHO) Five Moments for Hand Hygiene (July 2007).

Read all hesmagazine.com

Related web-site: National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA)

Related web-site: WHO: “A new and exciting concept in hand hygiene improvement has been developed by the WHO team and the University Hospitals of Geneva. Developed around a user-centred design approach incorporating strategies of human factors engineering, cognitive behaviour science and elements of social marketing, the Five Moments approach is central to the WHO multifaceted hand hygiene improvement strategy. “My five moments for hand hygiene’: a user-centred design approach to understand, train, monitor and report hand hygiene” was published in the Journal of Hospital Infection, September 2007”    Publication and other tarining materials/films available from WHO

World Health Organization: 2.5 Billion Live With Poor Sanitation Facilities

UNITED NATIONS – / MaximsNews Network / 30 July 2008

Every day, over 2.5 billion people suffer from a lack of access to improved sanitation and nearly 1.2 billion practise open defecation, the riskiest sanitary practice of all, according to a report issued today by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. The programme is the official UN mechanism tasked with monitoring progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Target 7c on drinking water supply and sanitation.

The report titled “Progress on drinking water and sanitation – special focus on sanitation,” comes halfway through the International Year of Sanitation. (…)

(…) Though the practice of open defecation is on the decline worldwide, 18% of the world’s population, totalling 1.2 billion people, still practise it. In southern Asia, some 778 million people still rely on this risky sanitation practice. (…)

Read all MaximsNewsNetwork

South Asia not on track to meet MDG sanitation goals: UNICEF- WHO report

South Asia has the highest rate of open defecation in the world at 48 percent, and is closely followed by sub-Saharan Africa (28 percent), says a  report issued today by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Drinking-water Supply and Sanitation (JMP).

According to the report,  63 percent (750 million people) of all open defecation takes place in South Asia. It also has the lowest rural coverage in the world at 23 percent, and the largest urban-rural disparity in the world (57 percent to 23 percent). (…)

Read all Newspost Online

UNICEF/WHO – Progress on Drinking-water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation

Progress on Drinking-water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation (pdf, 17MB) is now on the WHO Water Sanitation Health website and will also soon be on the UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) website at: http://www.wssinfo.org/.

This report introduces a new way of assessing global, regional and country progress using the “ladder” concept for both sanitation and drinking-water. For sanitation, trends in using improved, shared, and unimproved sanitation facilities are shown, in addition to the trend in open defecation. The drinking-water ladder shows the percentage of global population using piped connections into a dwelling, plot or yard; other improved water sources; and unimproved sources. The intention is to continue refining the “ladders” in future reports.

Table of Contents

3 The purpose of this report
4 2008: International Year of Sanitation
6 An new way to look at sanitation practices: the sanitation ladder
8 Progress towards the sanitation target
10 Urban-rural disparities in sanitation coverage
12 Improved sanitation
14 Shared sanitation
16 Unimproved sanitation facilities
18 Open defecation
20 A different perspective on progress.
22 The drinking water ladder
24 Progress towards the drinking water target
26 Urban-rural disparities in drinking water coverage
28 Piped water on premises
29 Other improved sources of drinking water
30 Unimproved sources of drinking water
32 A different perspective on progress
33 Expanding data collection
38 JMP methodology
41 Country, regional and global estimates on water and sanitation
54 Millennium Development Goals: regional groupings

Lancet: How to prevent a tenth of the global disease burden

Improving access to water, sanitation, and hygiene is discussed in this week’s lead Editorial and podcast. A new WHO report highlights how 10% of the global disease burden could be reduced by improved access to water and sanitation and by a staggering 15% in the 32 worst affected countries.

Read more The Lancet.com

Listen to The Lancet (podcast)

New WHO Report: Safer water, better health: Costs, benefits and sustainability of interventions to protect and promote health

The first-ever report depicting country-by-country estimates of the burden of disease due to water, sanitation and hygiene highlights how much disease could be prevented through increased access to safe water and better hygiene.

This comprehensive overview provides the epidemiological evidence and economic arguments for fully integrating water, sanitation and hygiene in countries’ disease reduction strategies — a pre-requisite to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It also provides the basis for preventive action by all relevant sectors managing critical water resources and services in support of public health efforts.

Lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene remains one of the world’s most urgent health issues.

See WHO web-page introducing the report

Download the full document (pdf 2.62Mb)

Related news – see:

Thaindian.com

News.smashits.com

environmental-expert.com

Africa: Address Sanitation to Break Cycle of Poverty

A speech by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organisation.

Let me go straight to the point. An estimated 40 per cent of the world’s population lives without one of the basic amenities of modern life: a toilet.

This means that 2.6 billion people are forced to relieve themselves in open spaces – in fields, forests, bushes, water bodies, or a patch of mud. This is a degrading way of life, and this is a form of environmental degradation with direct and dramatic consequences for health.

Lack of sanitation breeds the so-called diseases of filth. These are diseases caused by the faecal contamination of food, water, or soil, or spread by flies that feed on filth.

Read More

WHO – 10 facts on sanitation

Lack of sanitation facilities forces people to defecate in the open, in rivers or near areas where children play or food is prepared. This increases the risk of transmitting disease. The Ganges river in India has 1.1 million litres of raw sewage dumped into it every minute, a startling figure considering that one gram of faeces in untreated water may contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, 1000 parasite cysts and 100 worm eggs.

Read More – WHO