"Key Facts About Safe Drinking Water,Sanitation & Hygiene Practices"

Water, Environment and Sanitation

UNICEF’s long standing support for improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene stems from a firm conviction and based on sound evidence that these are central to ensuring the rights of children. 

In fact, it is essential for children to survive, grow and develop into healthy and fulfilled citizens of the world. In the broader context, UNICEF’s activities in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Fast Facts

Hand washing with soap, particularly after contact with excreta, can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40 per cent and respiratory infections by 30 per cent.  Diarrhoea and respiratory infections are the number one cause for child deaths in India.

Hand washing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia.

With 638 million people defecating in the open and 44 per cent mothers disposing their children’s faeces in the open, there is a very high risk of microbial contamination (bacteria, viruses, amoeba) of water which causes diarrhoea in children.

Children weakened by frequent diarrhoea episodes are more vulnerable to malnutrition and opportunistic infections such as pneumonia. About 48 per cent of children in India are suffering from some degree of malnutrition. Diarrhoea and worm infection are two major health conditions that affect school age children impacting their learning abilities.

Adequate, well-maintained water supply and sanitation facilities in schools encourage children to attend school regularly and help them achieve their educational goals. Inadequate water supply and sanitation in schools are health hazards and affect school attendance, retention and educational performance.

Adolescent girls are especially vulnerable to dropping out, as many are reluctant to continue their schooling because toilet facilities are not private, not safe or simply not available

Women and girls face shame and a loss of personal dignity and safety risk if there is no toilet at home. They have to wait for the night to relieve themselves to avoid being seen by others.

Sanitation

It is estimated that

• Only 31 per cent of India’s population use improved sanitation (2008)
• In rural India 21 per cent use improved sanitation facilities (2008)
• One Hundred Forty Five million people in rural India gained access to improved sanitation between 1990-2008
• Two hundred and Eleven Million people gained access to improved sanitation in whole of India between 1990-2008
• India is home to 638 million people defecating in the open; over 50 per cent of the population.
• In Bangladesh and Brazil, only seven per cent of the population defecate in the open. In China, only four per cent of the population defecate in the open.

Water

• 88 per cent of the population of 1.2 billion has access to drinking water from improved sources in 2008, as compared to 68 per cent in 1990.
• Only a quarter the total population in India has drinking water on their premise.
• Women, who have to collect the drinking water, are vulnerable to a number of unsafe practices. Only 13 per cent of adult males collect water.
• Sixty seven per cent of Indian households do not treat their drinking water, even though it could be chemically or bacterially contaminated.

Hygiene

• According to the Public Health Association, only 53 per cent of the population wash hands with soap after defecation, 38 per cent wash hands with soap before eating and only 30 per cent wash hands with soap before preparing food.
• Only 11 per cent of the Indian rural families dispose child stools safely. 80 per cent children’s stools are left in the open or thrown into the garbage.
• Only 6 per cent of rural children less than five years of age use toilets. 
• WASH Interventions significantly reduce diarrhoeal morbidity; statistically it has been shown that:

• Handwashing with soap reduces it by 44 per cent
• Household water treatment by 39 per cent
• Sanitation by 36 per cent
• Water supply by 23 per cent
• Source water treatment by 11 per cent.

Key Issues

• Newborn Infants: Hand washing by birth attendants before delivery has been shown to reduce mortality rates by 19 per cent while a 4 per cent reduction in risk of death was found if mothers washed their hands prior to handling their newborns.

• Children under five years: Poor WASH causes diarrhoea, which is the second biggest cause of death in children under five years. Diarrhoea is an immediate cause of under nutrition

• School-aged children: Children prefer to attend schools having adequate and private WASH facilities. Schools provide an excellent opportunity for children to learn about hygiene practices.

• Older Girls: Giving girls the knowledge and facilities necessary for good menstrual hygiene is key to their dignity, their privacy, their educational achievement and their health. Adolescent girls are empowered through improved menstrual hygiene management.

• Mothers and Caregivers: Hand washing with soap at critical times is important for protecting the health of the whole family. By being a role model, mothers and caregivers can also help instill in their children the good hygiene practices which will serve them for life.

• Children in emergencies: During emergencies, children are especially vulnerable to the effects of inadequate access to water and sanitation services. WASH is a key component of any emergency response.

Chemical contamination in water ensuring water quality at the source is crucial. In India, there is a widespread natural occurrence of arsenic and fluoride in the groundwater. UNICEF is supporting Government of India programs on arsenic and fluoride mitigation and identifying water quality testing technologies which are appropriate for use in field situations.

All emergencies cause disruption to basic services. People are less likely to be able to drink safe water, use basic sanitation facilities and maintain improved hygiene practices. Children, especially those under the age of five, are particularly vulnerable to the diseases which can result during emergencies.

These diseases include diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid, respiratory infections, skin and eye infections which are all likely to occur when water supplies and sanitation services are disrupted. UNICEF has set out minimum standards of response for any emergency situation. These describe the life saving actions which UNICEF will take within the first six to eight weeks of an emergency, along with the longer term role in the subsequent weeks and months.

source :-http://www.unicef.org/india/wes.html (UNICEF)

Why children are attending less School?

Heeals , 14th July 2012 
by Gaurav Kashyap

Behaviour of children towards Unhygienic practice, have a significant impact on child’s academic performance. majority of children are not properly taught healthy sanitation& personal hygiene habits , like washing hands with soap regularly ,wash hand before and after eating ,bathing daily.

Unhygienic practice make them sick, due to sickness they skip there classes, which result in poor academic performance and High dropout cases from School.
A good Hygienic behaviour in children help them in improving their academic performance ,availability of good sanitation facilities &improve in personal hygiene make children regular in their classes  and help in reducing the dropout cases.
Full Report: “On Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Facilities 2012”
Sixty percent of people living in india do not have access to Toilets and hence are forced to defecate in the open .
This make India the number One country in the world where open defecation is practiced .                                                                          
Indonesia with 63 million is a far second! Manority of people practicing open defecation lives in rural areas .
More then half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation lives in india or china .
Almost 10 % of all communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water & poor sanitation .
“Around 97% of all Indians do not clean drinking water” .The problem arises due to contamination of Drinking Water by leaked sewage .

Open defecation , Manual scavenging and lack of public toilets in urban slums & rural areas putting stigma on Indian face .
2011 census says , there was only 35% sanitation coverage .
“Sikkim becomes India’s first Nirmal State”
We hope every State would  achieve this status ,there are 2.6 million dry latrines in the country .
British medical journal lancet published research journal which shows that low sanitation & poor hygiene cause malnutrition, because of phenomenon called tropical anteropathy .
When the guts get weekend because of the lack of proper sanitation & hygiene it plays great impact then diarrhoea.

HUMAN WASTE TO LIGHT UP BIO-TOILETS DEVELOPED BY DRDO

HUMAN WASTE TO LIGHT UP BIO-TOILETS DEVELOPED BY DRDO

Picture: 

Kolkata, July 4, 2012: Methane gas generated from human waste could be used to light up bio-toilets developed by scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Acting on suggestions made by the Union minister for rural development, Mr Jairam Ramesh, the premier research agency is now working to provide lighting solution for the convenience of those who will use bio-toilets in darkness.

“We are finding out the means to do it as the rate of production of methane gas will be very small and it will be difficult to concentrate it at one place,” DRDO's head of research and development Dr W Selvamurthy said.  Mr Ramesh had recently inaugurated DRDO's project at Odisha's Dhamra coast where they are installing 1,000 bio-toilets to prevent open-defecation.

The minister had also asked officials there to increase the width of the eco-friendly toilet, named 'E-LOO' by DRDO, and also provide cross-ventilation.  “We will immediately incorporate these two changes in our external structure,” the scientist said.

The rural development ministry has announced plans to install these eco-toilets in 1,000 gram panchayats with a budget of Rs 400 crore. The bio-toilets use bio-digester technology wherein a bacteria feeds upon the fecal matter inside the septic tank, through anaerobic process which finally degrades the matter and releases methane gas and water.

“You can use this water for irrigation. We have demonstrated this by cultivating vegetables,” Dr Selvamurthy said, adding they have found the water to be safe even for animals. (Source: PTI)

How Mobile Games Can Help Improve Sanitation

More than 2.5 billion people, many of them in Africa and South Asia, face grave sanitation challenges. In many of these countries, people are more likely to own a cell phone than a toilet.  Therefore  there is an obvious opportunity to use mobile technology to promote the use of sanitation and good hygiene in order to make a substantial impact. Mobile phones in Kenya transfer money; Bangladeshis listen to English language classes on their phones; and in Ghana, women entrepreneurs use mobiles to market their wares.

The growing Games for Change industry applies principles of traditional social games to address specific challenges . For example, in the UK,  Channel 4 commissioned the game developer Playniac to build an online game to improve financial literacy among the 50% of young Britons who are heavily in debt. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, young developers have built iPhone, Android, and Javascript games based on local storylines. Pledge 51, a Nigerian developer group, recently released Danfo, a game where the user plays as a bus driver coping with dense Nigerian traffic.

Hattery Labs has begun to explore how games might improve sanitation practices. The typical game-players in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are young urban males who own smartphones, but many of the communities that face the greatest sanitation challenges have less advanced technology. However, Javascript games built for Nokia S40 phones (among the most popular handsets in the developing world) provide an opportunity to send a compelling message on good behavior practices in sanitation and hygiene.  A full report on how games can promote good sanitation and behavior practice is HERE.

Here are a few game ideas that might prove effective:

Soap Wars makes hand-washing an entertaining challenge where players use the soap dispenser as a weapon against dangerous germs.

Sanitation Heroes engages players in the process of sanitation maintenance from capturing, transporting, and disposing of feces to reusing it as fertilizer. It features different scenarios in a memory game that prompts the player to match the solution to each different stage of capturing and treating waste.

Toilet Hunt introduces obstacles along the course of finding a safe place to go to the bathroom. As the player searches for sanitary latrines on a basic map, they must use the clues to decide whether the latrine is safe.

There are outstanding questions that the current research hasn’t resolved:

How does the game appeal to illiterate players, who need rich visual descriptions and narratives to guide the gameplay? The need for rich imagery does not necessarily match the small, low-resolution screens of Nokia S40 phones.

How does the game appeal to women, who are critical participants in sanitation  but don’t represent the largest percentage of mobile game players? One initial idea is to frame sanitation storylines as mobile ‘comic books’, allowing users to scroll through an interesting narrative with subtle sanitation and hygiene messages.

How can the lessons from the game translate to rural areas, where there are fewer who can access it and more who face the challenges that it seeks to mitigate? Urban users might take their phone with them to their home village and share it with their friends and family, who will begin playing the game and continue to play out the game’s storyline in real life.

Finally, how can the game measure its impact on sanitation behavior? User adoption and engagement in this context is a false metric to evaluate impact since users might play the game but have their behavior unchanged. Any solution to measure impact should combine a mobile game with other digital and non-digital applications that help users track their sanitation use alongside their game success. Local developers can work in partnership with games for change experts, community organizations, and telecommunications companies to test these approaches.

This report explores the potential of using mobile games to engage citizens in addressing persistent community challenges but we want to hear from you.  Is this an effective way to engage target populations?  Are there other ideas for how games can impact behavior change?  Would you play these games?


Source:- http://www.impatientoptimists.org/en/Posts/2012/06/How-mobile-games-can-help-improve-sanitation

Sanitation project in limbo in West Bengal,India

With the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) delaying identifying beneficiaries for the integrated sanitation programme, people living below the poverty line in the twin cities are once again being denied the opportunity to live a better life.

Even two years after the project was launched, the HDMC has not shown much interest to complete the survey of beneficiaries on time and submit a report to the government to fast-track the proceedings.


In the absence of proper sanitation facilities, these people of a lesser god are forced to go through the ignominy of attending nature's call in the open and living in unhygienic conditions.

The much-hyped sanitation programme, funded by both the central government and the state government, is aimed at providing toilet facilities for all the BPL families.

In 2009, the municipal corporations in the state were asked to conduct a survey to identify the beneficiaries and submit a report to the government. Under the project, each family will get Rs 9,000 for the construction ofa toilet and another Rs 1,000, if they do not have a safety tank.

According to sources, the NGO, which was vested with the responsibility to conduct the door-to-door survey, has abandoned the project abruptly citing difficulty in getting documents from people. Though it undertook the work in 2010, it made no headway.

The corporation is now planning to call fresh tenders for the survey.

NGO head Gurushantappa told TOI that they covered 5,000 BPL families during the survey and found it difficult to collect all the documents from them.

"If the corporation is ready to give the work again, we will finish it soon," he claimed.

HDMC special officer S H Naregal admitted that there is a delay in the process as the NGO failed to collect all the required details from the beneficiaries.




Source :- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-06/hubli/32565407_1_hdmc-hubli-dharwad-municipal-corporation-sanitation-project

Toilets are being used for storing food grain: Ramesh

 Decrying the lack of proper sanitation facilities, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday said toilets built over the last 10 years across the country are being used for storing food grain.
"In last 10 years, toilets have been built (across the country)...But toilets are not being used for the purpose for which they had been built. They are being used for storing food grain...they have been turned into storage godowns and they have been locked," Ramesh told reporters here today.
The minister chaired a regional review meeting on drinking water supply and sanitation in which representatives from Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Sikkim, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh participated.

Asked about states where toilets were being used for storing food grain, Ramesh said Punjab was one of them where this practice was being followed.
Not optimistic of achieving the target of making India an open-defecation free country in next 10 years, Ramesh said there were several big states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa where it would take at least 15-20 years to become open-defecation free.
"...I do not think that we can achieve this target...we have several big states like UP, Bihar, Orissa and MP where it seems impossible that these states will be open-defecation free by 2022. These states may take 15-20 years," he noted.
Asserting that 60 per cent people in the country still defecate in the open, Ramesh said that the Centre had set a target to become open-defecation free under the 'Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan' in the next ten years.
The financial assistance for setting up a toilet has also been hiked from Rs 3,500 to Rs 10,000 by the Centre, Ramesh said.
Noting that there was a need to bring about a change in the mindset of people, he stressed that strong political will would also be essential to make the country open-defecation free.
He said, "Sikkim has become the first state in the country which is now open-defecation free. By November, Kerala will become open-defecation free, thereafter Himachal Pradesh will in March 2013".
Though Haryana was on course to have sanitation facilities by March 2015, Ramesh said that only two per cent of Gram Panchayats in Punjab have them.
He further said that an MoU would soon be signed with DRDO to have 50,000 bio-digester to facilitate proper sanitation facilities and 1,000 Gram Panchayats would be selected in first phase to set up bio-digester based toilets






Link to the source :- http://ibnlive.in.com/news/toilets-are-being-used-for-storing-food-grain/269788-3.html