SACOSAN 7: registration closes 15 December

South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN),  a government led biennial convention held on a rotational basis in each SAARC country (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), provides a platform for interaction on sanitation.

SACOSAN VII will be held on 13-17 February 2018 in Pakistan, hosted by Ministry of Climate Change, Government of Pakistan.

The deadline for registration is 15 December 2017.

Below is an overview of the theme papers and country leads

Theme papers	Lead country
Sanitation as cross cutting (Health and Nutrition)	Afghanistan
Climate Change/Environment and Sanitation	Bangladesh
Sociology of Sanitation	Bhutan
Operation, Maintenance and Sustainability of WASH	India
Policy, Strategy and Sector Planning (institutional arrangements)	Maldives
Human Resource Development for WASH	Nepal
Accountability and Regulation Monitoring and Evaluation	Pakistan or Sri Lanka? [conflicting info on website]
WASH Financing	Sri Lanka or Pakistan? [conflicting info on website]

For more information and updates go to: sacosan.com/

Fed up with no sewers, Pakistan’s slum residents go DIY

Fed up with no sewers, Pakistan’s slum residents go DIY | Source: Reuters, Oct 13 2016 |

In Orangi Town, home to an estimated 2.4 million people, residents have given up waiting for the government to install public services – and built them by hand

KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For Sultana Javed, one of dozens of residents living without proper sanitation on her street in the Orangi Town slum, the final straw came when her toddler daughter fell into the soak pit where the family disposed of their waste.

An aerial view of informal settlements in Orangi Town, Karachi on October 4, 2016. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Aamir Saeed

Since moving to the Gulshan-e-Zia area of the slum in Karachi nine years earlier, Javed had poured waste into the soak pit, a porous chamber that lets sewage soak into the ground and is often used by communities that lack toilets.

Javed, whose son caught dengue fever from mosquitoes near the pit outside their home, began mobilising others among 22 families on her street to install their own sewerage system.

“We are fed up with stench of wastewater and frequent mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever. So, we have decided to lay a sewerage pipeline in our street on a self-help basis,” Javed, 45, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Read the complete article.

Angela Kearney on Sanitation and Stunting

In a recent interview in the Pakistan Television programme ‘Diplomatic Enclave’, conducted by Omar Khalid Butt, UNICEF Representative in Pakistan Ms. Angela Kearney sheds light on the priorities of UNICEF and the targets and achievements of the UN Children’s Fund in Pakistan.

In this clip she speaks about access to sanitation and stunting in Pakistan, and the relation between the two problems. She also sheds light on the progress Pakistan has made in the recent years in achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on sanitation.

Pakistan president to open national sanitation conference PACOSAN II

President Mamnoon Hussain will inaugurate the 2nd Pakistan Conference on Sanitation (PACOSAN II) that is being held from 17-18 February 2015 at the Sareena Hotel in Islamabad.

PACOSAN II is organised by the Ministry of Climate Change, with the support of WaterAid, UNICEF, Water and Sanitation Program – South Asia (WSP-SA), Plan Pakistan and other sector partners.

Even though Pakistan has achieved a significant reduction in open defecation, it is still practised by 41 million people.

The 1st national sanitation conference PACOSAN I took place in May 2009 – see a conference report on the WSP website.

Follow updates on Twitter at @PACOSAN_II and on Facebook.

A cross sectional survey of knowledge, attitude and practices related to house flies among dairy farmers

A cross sectional survey of knowledge, attitude and practices related to house flies among dairy farmers in Punjab, Pakistan. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2013, 9:18

• Full text

Hafiz Azhar Ali Khan. et al.

Background: House flies are of major public health concerns in areas with poor sanitation and hygienic conditions. Unfortunately, sanitation and hygiene have always been ignored in dairy farms particularly in the developing or
low-income countries. Management of these flies mostly depends on the awareness regarding associated hazards and protective measures taken by the people to minimize risks associated with flies. The present study therefore
explores the knowledge, attitude and practices taken by dairy farmers in Punjab, Pakistan against house flies.

Methods: The present study was based on a cross sectional self administered survey to a convenience sample of 173 small scale dairy farmers in four localities – Multan, Lahore, Shorkot and Faisalabad – of Pakistan. The
relationships between socio-demographics, knowledge and preventive practices were investigated through logistic regression analysis and chi-square test of association.

Results: Considerable number of dairy farmers 71/173 (41.04%) had no idea about the problems associated with house flies. Although 77/173 (44.51%) dairy farmers reported house flies as disease transmitters, only 23 (29.87%)
farmers were familiar with diseases and 22 (28.57%) had somewhat idea of the mode of disease transmission. We found a positive association between dairy farmer’s education level and overall knowledge of house flies in multivariate analysis. Farmer’s education level and knowledge of the house flies breeding sites had a positive association with the adoption of house fly prevention practices by the respondents. However, knowledge of the problems associated with house flies and preventive measures had no association with house fly prevention practices.
Conclusion: The present ethnoentomological survey provides information about knowledge, attitude and practices of dairy farmers related to house flies in Punjab, Pakistan. We conclude that the farmers’ education level and knowledge of the breeding sites had a positive association with the adoption of prevention practices against house flies. The study also highlights the need of targeting the lack of knowledge of dairy farmers for the successful management of house flies.

Community-driven sanitation improvement in deprived urban neighbourhoods

Community-driven sanitation improvement in deprived urban neighbourhoods: Meeting the challenges of local collective action, co-production, affordability and a trans-sectoral approach, 2013.

• Full text, pdf

Gordon McGranahan.

There is an international consensus that urban sanitary conditions are in great need of improvement, but sharp disagreement over how this improvement should be pursued. Both market-driven and state-led efforts to improve sanitation in deprived communities tend to be severely compromised, as there is a lack of effective market demand (due to collective action problems) and severe barriers to the centralized provision of low-cost sanitation facilities. In principle, community-driven initiatives have a number of advantages.

But community-driven sanitary improvement also faces serious challenges, including:
1) The collective action challenge of getting local residents to coordinate and combine their demands for sanitary improvement;
2) The co-production challenge of getting the state to accept community-driven approaches to sanitary improvement, and where necessary to coinvest and take responsibility for the final waste disposal;
3) The affordability challenge of finding improvements that are affordable and acceptable to both the state and the community – and to other funders if relevant;
4) The trans-sectoral challenge of ensuring that other poverty-related problems, such as insecure tenure, do not undermine efforts to improve sanitation.

Water and sanitation crusader killed in Karachi attack

OPP-RTI Director Perveen Rahman. Photo: NPR / Dawn

Perveen Rahman, director of the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute (OPP-RTI), was shot dead in Karachi, Pakistan, on Wednesday 13 March 2013. The internationally acclaimed and widely replicated project that she led, succeeded in bringing low-cost sanitation to Karachi’s Orangi squatter community of 1 million people.

Ms Rahman’s associates believe her death was linked to her work on exposing Karachi’s land grabbing and water mafia. The police suspect Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants of being behind the killing. The Express Tribune reports that Ms Rahman had also worked in a Taliban-controlled area in Karachi.

Peepoo toilets in flood emergencies in Sindh, Pakistan and Kisumu, Kenya

Pakistan – Low Cost Handmade Sanitary Pads! From Design to Production

Low Cost Handmade Sanitary Pads! From Design to Production A Step Forward in Menstrual Hygiene Promotion in Pakistan, 2012.

• Download full-text (pdf)

By Hina Israr & Syed Shah Nasir, IRSP-Pakistan

ABSTRACT: “In order to manage the basic phenomena of menstruation, sanitary materials are used by women of all ages, almost from 14 to 45 years of age, though branded material are available in urban areas but difficult in rural, in those areas where such materials are available, they are expensive and difficult to afford and manage as well, so it has been planned by IRSP to introduce MHM specific low cost technologies in Pakistan for not just providing ease in their practices but also for paving way for women empowerment through involving them in large scale sanitary pad production.”

Pakistan’s waste gets a second life

Dec. 1, 2011 – Entrepreneur turns Pakistan’s tons of garbage into a handsome profit while saving the environment.

Clean” and “green” are words not usually associated with the streets of Lahore, but a garbage collecting business is changing the image of the Pakistani city.

And it is making millions of dollars in the process, by turning waste into liquefied petroleum products and fertiliser for farmlands.

• Link to video