Community Health Workers: Champions of Affordable and Accessible Sanitation Products
This blog originally appeared on KIWASH’s blog.
This blog originally appeared on KIWASH’s blog.
A 2015 report from UNICEF and WHO found that limited data exists on the status of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in healthcare facilities (HCF). Few assessments have been conducted and even fewer collect data beyond the basic coverage of WASH within a HCF. In order to determine the extent of the problem and develop an action plan to address gaps, more comprehensive assessments are needed.
Natural ecosystems capture, store and purify water, allowing biodiversity programming to complement and protect water and sanitation investments. Similarly, by improving waste water treatment and increasing water use efficiency, water and sanitation programming reduces the pollution of aquatic ecosystems and lessens the amount of water taken from rivers or lakes.
In Ethiopia and Uganda, the Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership (SWS) developed and piloted a novel Factor Mapping approach to better understand the complex relationships between factors that influence water, sanitation, and hygiene services. The Factor Mapping process is a stakeholder-driven decision support technique that generates systems-based insights into how factors interact as a complex and dynamic system to affect WASH service delivery outcomes.
In a crisis, humanitarians are often responsible for providing or repairing handwashing infrastructure for the affected population. This creates an opportunity for us to build infrastructure and provide products which encourage people to practice handwashing with soap.
Wash'Em developed this guide to assist humanitarian actors in designing handwashing facilities that can actually change behavior.
USAID’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Finance (WASH-FIN) program is designed to facilitate leveraging upwards of $200 million from non-traditional financing sources in Africa and Asia,
Access to clean water and improved sanitation is fundamental to preventing the spread of water-borne disease like cholera. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Haiti supports the Haitian National Directorate of Potable Water and Sanitation to build and monitor essential water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and strengthen the national water and sanitation workforce. This infographic details some of their efforts
The 5-year Feed the Future (FtF), Nigeria Livelihoods Project (2013–2018), implemented by Catholic Relief Service, supported impoverished households in Nigeria to boost their agriculture production and incomes, and improve nutrition. The project involved four main components of cross-sectoral community-based interventions. This cost-effective analysis (CEA) focuses on the WASH and nutrition component, designed to promote optimal nutrition, provide water and sanitation access, and improve hygiene practices through interventions in WASH and nutrition areas.
In Ethiopia, despite increases in water supply and sanitation coverage in rural areas and a favorable policy environment, only an estimated 30% of the rural population had basic drinking water service, and as few as 4% had basic sanitation in 2015 (WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme). As assessed by UNICEF Ethiopia, 60-80% of communicable diseases are attributed to low levels of access to safe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene services, while poor WaSH is a major contributor to mal- and undernutrition[1].