WHO Guidelines on Sanitation and Health
Safe sanitation is essential for health, from preventing infection to improving and maintaining mental and social well-being.
Safe sanitation is essential for health, from preventing infection to improving and maintaining mental and social well-being.
This document summarizes evidence and guidance on project design and results framework indicators for nutrition-sensitive water supply, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) operations and WASH components of other sector and subsector projects. The current body of evidence on the links between WASH and nutrition provides important clues as to what nutrition sensitive enhancements are needed to achieve greater impacts on early child nutrition and human capital.
In some remote parts of Ghana, girls are told that crossing a river during their menstrual period will offend the river deity — so some skip school to avoid incurring the deity’s wrath. In some rural communities in western Nepal, menstruating women are told that their presence jeopardizes crops, water supply, and health — so they go into quarantine each month. In Afghanistan, some women are told that showering during menstruation causes infertility — so they spend their entire cycle without washing themselves.
Every May 28, Menstrual Hygiene Day (MH Day) raises awareness and combats taboos associated with menstrual hygiene with the goal of enabling women and girls to achieve their full potential. The theme of Menstrual Hygiene Day 2019—It's Time for Action—not only emphasizes the urgency of this public health issue, but also highlights the transformative power of improved menstrual hygiene to unlock economic and educational opportunities for women and girls.
The U.S. Government Global Water Strategy identifies poor hygiene and the lack of adequate water and sanitation as a leading cause of disease and death worldwide and a contributor to the spread of many neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
The USAID Neglected Tropical Disases (NTD) program has programs to eliminate and/or control NTDs in 24 countries. Even as NTDs are eliminated through mass drug administration, the reinfection of these diseases will remain a problem if behaviors and the environment remain unchanged. STH, schistosomiasis, and trachoma are all clearly linked to inadequate sanitation, contaminated food and water, and poor hygiene, providing an opportunity for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) related approaches to help change behavior and the environment.
Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are critical in the prevention and care for all of the 17 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) scheduled for intensified control or elimination by 2020. Provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene is one of the five key interventions within the global NTD roadmap. Yet to date, the WASH component of the strategy has received little attention and the potential to link efforts on WASH and NTDs has been largely untapped.
Despite strong economic growth and rising living standards in the last two decades, high levels of undernutrition persist in Cambodia. Tackling childhood undernutrition requires a broad range of ‘nutrition specific’ and ‘nutrition sensitive’ interventions that act to ensure adequate dietary intake and address the multiple underlying or enabling determinants. However, when rigorously evaluated, interventions to improve dietary intake alone have not been successful in reducing stunting.
On April 5, USAID held a webinar to discuss findings from the recent report from the USAID-funded WASHPaLS Project, "Toward a Hygienic Environment for Infants and Young Children: A Review of the Literature."
The lack of access to safe drinking water is felt disproportionately by those who are disadvantaged socially, economically, demographically or geographically, and explicit consideration of these groups is required to understand and address disparities.