Urban Sanitation in Bo City, Sierra Leone: A Study on Knowledge, Attitude and Practices

A Summary on Urban Sanitation in Bo City, Sierra Leone: A Study on Knowledge, Attitude and Practices, 2015. 

• Summary, pdf

Authors: Bockarie Abdel Aziz Bawoh, Welthungerhilfe M&E Officer; Swaliho Koroma, Bo City Council Waste Officer

Coordinated by Raphael Thurn, Welthungerhilfe Project Advisor

Published in April 2015 by Bo City Council and Welthungerhilfe Bo, Sierra Leone

Contact wash@welthungerhilfe.de to request the full report.

Conclusions and Recommendations
This study has shown that the general level of knowledge of people about proper solid and liquid waste management is in many areas not profound enough to ensure systematically behavioural changes in the future. Furthermore the indiscriminate disposal of solid and liquid waste by local households is common and widespread. It needs to be understood that the existing sanitation facilities
of households are often not meeting minimum standards3. The capacities and infrastructure of the public and private sector to efficiently address these challenges are insufficient to ensure the provision of quality services to the residents of Bo City. There is also very little knowledge and information about concepts like reuse, recycling, waste minimization and separation.

Strategies to improve household solid and liquid waste management in Bo City and its environs are recommended to consider these identified deficiencies. One focus should lie on increasing the knowledge on health and environmental implications of inadequate solid and liquid waste management. It will be prudent to encourage community involvement in waste management whereby the communities have a sense of responsibility towards their own health and environment. Another aspect is to improve government involvement through provision of sufficient funds, equipment (especially for sludge emptying), capacity building and manpower, and to create an enabling environment for private investments in solid and liquid waste management including the waste collection, transportation, trading, reuse and recycling sector. Information needs to be disseminated on methods and practices of reuse and recycling and local markets for waste traders and recyclers need to be further developed. Steps taken in these directions could help to achieve improved sanitary conditions in Bo City and its environs and also reduce the spread of preventable diseases.

Menstrual hygiene reports from Bolivia, Philippines and Sierra Leone

In 2012, UNICEF and the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University initiated a programme to support collaborative research focused specifically on exploring the MHM challenges faced by female students in Bolivia, the Philippines, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The project includes developing or
strengthening MHM-related programming in schools in those countries. 

Emory University sent research fellows to work with UNICEF and its in-country WASH in Schools partners on the programme. The assessment activities conducted and themes explored were guided by an ecological framework that covers societal, environmental, interpersonal, personal and biological factors. Questions for qualitative data collection were created to investigate and understand the personal challenges and needs girls have during menstruation in the school setting.

The results are now published as a series of reports:

Bolivia – Long, Jeanne, Bethany A. Caruso, Diego Lopez, Koenraad Vancraeynest, Murat Sahin, Karen L. Andes and Matthew C. Freeman, ‘WASH in Schools Empowers Girls’ Education in Rural Cochabamba, Bolivia: An assessment of menstrual hygiene management in schools’, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, November 2013.

Philippines – Jacquelyn, Bethany A. Caruso, Anna Ellis, Murat Sahin, Jonathan Michael Villasenor, Karen L. Andes and Matthew C. Freeman, ‘WASH in Schools Empowers Girls’  Education in Masbate Province and Metro Manila, Philippines: An assessment of menstrual hygiene management in schools’, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, November 2013.

Sierra Leone – Caruso, Bethany A., Alexandra Fehr, Kazumi Inden, Murat Sahin, Anna Ellis,  Karen L. Andes and Matthew C. Freeman, ‘WASH in Schools Empowers Girls’ Education in Freetown, Sierra Leone: An assessment of menstrual hygiene management in schools’, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, November 2013.

 

Study examines sustainability of CLTS programmes in Africa

Despite the widespread implementation of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programs and many claims of success, there has been very little systematic investigation into their sustainability.  A new study, which aims to change that, is creating a stir in the WASH sector.

A study commissioned by Plan International on the sustainability of CLTS programs in Africa revealed that 87% of the households still had a functioning latrine. This would indicate a remarkably low rate of reversion (13%) to open defecation (OD) or “slippage”.

However, if the criteria used to originally award open defecation free (ODF) status to villages are used, then the overall slippage rate increased dramatically to  92%. These criteria are:

• A functioning latrine with a superstructure
• A means of keeping flies from the pit (either water seal or lid)
• Absence of excreta in the vicinity of the house
• Hand washing facilities with water and soap or soap-substitute such as ash
• Evidence that the latrine and hand washing facilities were being used

Tender for external evaluation WASH Facility: Sierra Leone

Adam Smith International are procuring for external evaluators (consultants or firm) to evaluate the Sierra Leone WASH Facility.

The Facility, which has a total budget of £5 million (US$ 8.4 million), is managed and administered by Adam Smith International, on behalf of DfID and the Government of Sierra Leone (particularly the Ministry of Water Resources, and Ministry of Health & Sanitation).

The evaluation covers the Facility mechanism itself, and its portfolio of 36 projects funded by small grants all less than £200,000 (US$ 330,000) each.

It is expected the evaluation will require approximately 60-80 days total level of effort.  Organisations or individuals that have been financed by the WASH Facility cannot apply.

Deadline for applications:  6pm (GMT) 14th March 2014

For full details and application guidelines please consult the attached Terms of Reference.

Please do not send applications or requests for information to Sanitation Updates.

AMCOW training consultancy on sanitation & hygiene policy development

The African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) needs the services of a training service provider to carry out a sanitation and hygiene policy training.  Focal persons in Burundi, Chad, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe need to be brought up to speed on drawing up plans and strategies .

The aim of this small (20 days) but interesting assignment is to:

train the focal countries on the process of developing a policy document and costed implementation plans and strategies for ending open defecation in those countries, and how to operationalise them.

The assignment supports a US$ 2 million Gates Foundation funded policy and advocacy project being implemented by AMCOW .

Closing date for receipt of applications is March 7, 2014.

Read the full Terms of Reference.

Please do not submit applications or requests for information to Sanitation Updates.

Creative measures improve sanitation programmes in eight African countries

Sapling handwashing, Malawi. Photo: Plan Malawi

Eight African countries are creatively achieving the goals of community led total sanitation programmes (CLTS) including one idea in Malawi where handwashing is monitored according to the health of tree seedlings planted beneath water outlets.

In Zambia several schools have established vegetable gardens to reduce malnutrition and improve school attendance. Some of the harvests have been sold raising funds for school activities.

In Sierra Leone men have traditionally been the community leaders but women are now being encouraged to play a major part in village committees and networks of natural leaders.  To support CLTS women conduct house-to-house monitoring, giving health talks and reporting diseases –- many of them overcoming challenges such as illiteracy to maintain the programme.

Plan International’s five year Pan African CLTS (PAC) programme which ends in December, 2014, is operating in the eight countries of Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi, Ghana and Niger. With the backing of the Dutch government the project was designed to promote and scale up sanitation in communities and schools.

WaterAid – Keeping promises: why African leaders need now to deliver on their past water and sanitation commitments

210 million more Africans lack access to sanitation than in 1990 | Source: WaterAid-Feb 18, 2013

African Governments are failing to keep their funding promises on sanitation, a new WaterAid report has revealed. The report warns that unless investment is increased, the challenges of urbanisation, climate change and most critically population growth risk turning the clock back on sanitation access even further(1).

Kroo Bay slum in Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2012, during the worst cholera outbreak in nearly 15 years. Credit: Tommy Trenchard

From 1990 to 2010, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 340 million, however only 130 million people secured access to sanitation over the same period(2). In total nearly 600 million Sub-Saharan Africans – 70% of the population – are without access to a safe toilet(3).

The Keeping promises: why African leaders need now to deliver on their past water and sanitation commitments report uses official Government figures from five African Governments – Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Uganda – to show that funding on sanitation is falling short of government commitments across the continent.

Sierra Leone – 1,000th community declared “Open defecation free”

1,000th community declared “Open defecation free” in Sierra Leone

Pewama village in the Kenema District was recently officially counted as Sierra Leone’s 1,000th community to be declared “Open Defecation Free” (ODF). This means that each household now has access to their own latrines, hand washing facilities and other hygiene interventions without relying on financial and logistical support from government and development agencies.

The latrines are being built by villagers using locally produced materials such as mud bricks and Palm Fronds under the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme.

Sierra Leone, Freetown: photographer documents extreme sanitation conditions in Kroo Bay slum

He then asked me: you want to know the truth? We’re all suffering here in Kroo Bay. He began talking about the water issues again and showing me his arms with open sores, “you see these, they move at night” – he was talking about the worms in his body.

Photographer Dominic Chavez spent a week documenting the life of communities in Kroo Bay, one of the worst slums in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He writes about his encounters in the summer 2010 issue of Global Health magazine, a publication of the Global Health Council.

[A]fter meeting a wonderful family who lived underneath a small bridge in Freetown. I was surprised by the amount of raw sewage and the lack of clean water. After visiting this family a couple more times they told me there were communities in Freetown much worse.

This was when I first heard of Kroo Bay, a difficult slum filled with good families and shanty structures overrun with garbage, extreme sanitation issues, and a long list of health conditions due to the lack of clean water. Some of the biggest issues they are facing are polio, ringworm, typhoid fever and malaria, not to forget a high incidence of child malnutrition.

Kroo Bay, Freetown. Photo: Dominic Chavez

In Kroo Bay, Chavez saw some of the worse conditions he had ever seen: homes without with dirt floors, no windows, no doors and roofs that provided no shelter from the heat and rain, and children “digging in heaps of trash and pools of blackened water”.

See the full story and pictures.

Sierra Leone, 22 villages go ‘Open Defecation Free’ in Kenema

The community led total sanitation (C.L.T.S) has certified twenty-two communities in the Kandu Leppiama Chiefdom in Kenema District as ‘open defecation free’ zones. This followed an extensive community cleaning exercise climaxed by the construction of their own latrines out of local materials for the control of human faeces. The project is being organized by the Muloma Womesn’s Development Association (MUWODA), jointly supported by UNICEF and the District Health Management Team.

The ODF celebration attracted dignitaries from the Kenema District Council, the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, representatives from NGOs and a host of others.

The program manager for MUWODA, Jeneba Nyallay said the existence of MUWODA as an entity is to promote the cultural, political and socio-economic status of rural women. “The vision of our organization is to initiate and undertake activities that can contribute to the improvement of the status of women and children,” she opined. She however noted that such can only be achieved through increase in food production, skills training, peace building efforts and advocacy for women’s rights and as well as the protection of disadvantaged children in society.

Giving a brief overview of their activities, Madam Nyallay said from 2002 to present they have undertaken skills training activities in gara, tie dyeing, tailoring, hairdressing and embroidery among others, adding that about 150 youths are currently engaged in metal works, carpentry Rights Act of 2007

On behalf of KCC, Chief Administrator Charlie Kallon who chaired the celebration expressed thanks and appreciations to MUWODA, the District Health Management Team, and other NGOs for reviving the CLTS which he said had become dormant since the war broke out in 1991. He appealed to the community people to take good care and maintain the newly constructed latrines.

MUWODA programme coordinator Samuel Bangali described the association as a female led organization that has over the years embarked on social work in both Kenema and Kailahun Districts by empowering rural women to be self reliant in their various communities. he said the organisation has succeeded in bringing women groups together, though he lamented on the high level of illiteracy among women posing a limitation to their ability to assume leadership roles in society.

Source – http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200515622.shtml