peepoo

While many of you have heard of the peepoo product, the worlds first marketed “flying toilet” like solution.  Many may not have seen it in action.  Here are two interesting videos about the PEEPOO. (I found these videos on http://watersanitationhygiene.org ).  These appear to be having some positive impacts on the Kibera Community in Kenya so if you are interested check out this impact assessment funded by GTZ .

myopia

The terms myopia and myopic (or the common terms short sightedness or short sighted) have also been used metaphorically to refer to cognitive thinking and decision making that is narrow sighted or lacking in concern for wider interests or longer-term consequences.” -Wikipedia (8/9/09)

I started to think about this term after reading a paper from Environmental Health Perspectives called Public Health Strategies for Western Bangladesh That Address Arsenic, Manganese, Uranium, and Other Toxic Elements in Drinking Water. The authors of this paper sampled a number of tube wells in Western Bangladesh to investigate the water quality, not only with respect to Arsenic but an array of other potential toxicants.   They found levels exceeding WHO health-based drinking water guidelines for Uranium, Manganese, Arsenic, Chromium, and Lead along with significant levels of other important elements like Antimony.  Why is this interesting one may ask?

After drilling millions of tube wells to save people from the morbidity and mortality related to gastrointestinal illnesses, UN agencies and the Bangladesh Government realized that they had exposed millions of people to arsenic.  This arsenic shifted the causes of illness and death related to water to other ailments like cancer (lung/bladder/skin).  Most of you know how this happened but in case you don’t…They simply didn’t test the water for Arsenic!!!

With so much focus on dealing with the arsenic problem, are we forgetting about other potential toxicants in the water?  This study seems to suggest we may be – at least in some parts of Bangladesh.  The government of Bangledesh is focused on testing each and every well for As but does not look at many of these other elements mentioned in the article (it should be noted that Arsenic probably poses the biggest threat to the population but the possible effects of the others are by no means negligible).   The authors note that in wells exceeding limits for As Uranium was not often found in quantities above the limit. However, the household treatment technology that many use to remove arsenic could actually increase the dissolved Uranium concentration (by making otherwise insoluble form soluble)….

This type of myopia happens all the time the water and sanitation sector.  We want to focus only on provision of clean water but don’t want to think about the multiple other pathways for enteric pathogen transmission.   We focus on toilets but forget that there is no readily accessible water to wash hands….Hopefully it won’t take another mass poisoning for us to wake up and look at the big picture.

Check out the article it is pretty interesting (oh and try to estimate the carbon footprint of the samples that made their way from India to Dubai to France to Vermont,USA)

Short Roundup

A quick post for the week:

1. USAID has launched a website about Water Financing.  The focus of this portal is to help partners of USAID comply with the 2005 Water for the Poor Act but they hope others can also learn how to incorporate notions of financial sustainability into their water projects…I have not had too much time to play around inside this site but it seems like an interesting idea.  (One other thing I learned when doing a little research on the 2005 WftP Act is that there is a 2009 bill under consideration that would establish an office of water within USAID!)

2. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine got “hooked up” with an announcement of a 4.8 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to look into low-tech solutions for on-site sanitation.  From the little detail I have seen, it seems like their funding will be used to research techniques for speeding up microbial processes in pit latrines…I look forward to seeing the results of this research!

3.  The World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program came out with Guidance Notes on Services for the Urban Poor: A practical guide for improving water and sanitation services. I haven’t had a chance to read this in detail but wanted to send a link out for anyone interested….

Sulabh Sanitation Movement

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, a self described “action sociologist”,  has catalyzed the construction of over 1.2 million latrines in India – yes 1,200,000!!!  Since 1970 Dr. Pathak and his Sulbah Sanitation Movement has helped change Indians’ perception of sanitation, and developed new and innovative technologies for both rural and urban populations.  For his work on the Sulabh Sanitation Movement and its contribution to making sanitation a priority in India, Dr. Pahtak was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize this week.  In case you wanted to know a little bit about his accomplishment/innovations, here is a short overview:

• Sulabh public toilet and bath facilities based on that system at 7500 locations, together serving more than 10 million people daily. These pay-per-use public facilities provide an economically sustainable, ecological, and culturally acceptable solution to hygiene problems in crowded slum communities and public places.• Optimized water conservation in the Sulabh Shauchalaya systems, requiring only 1.5 litres of water per use to flush, in contrast to conventional toilets that require a minimum of 10 litres. This has significant additional benefits for health and quality of life in water-poor regions.
• Environmentally balanced wastewater treatment based on a duckweed and fish raising (pisciculture) ecosystem that provides economic opportunities for rural poor communities.
• Several technologies that convert waste from Sulabh Shauchalaya toilets into biogas for heating, cooking, and generating electricity.
• The Sulabh Shauchalaya twin pit, pour-flush toilet system now in use in more than 1.2 million residences and buildings built by Sulabh. This technology has been declared a Global Best Practice by United Nations HABITAT and Centre for Human Settlements, and is now recommended by the UNDP for use by more than 2.6 billion people around the world.
(taken from here)

The Twin Pit Flush Latrine

This is only a short list….Check out their website for more info.

Honestly, this guy is an bonified sanitation guru.  From the development of a sanitation museum (that is right) to a sanitation encyclopedia, this guy knows his shit (literally).  Hopefully this prize will help highlight the Sulabh Sanitation Movement’s accomplishments and teach the world/WASH sector a thing or two about going to scale.

The Toilet Museum

World Water Week

As many of you probably know, the World Water Week conference is currently taking place in Stockholm.  This conference has a geographically diverse group of people from the water, sanitation, hygiene, and health fields.  If you are interested in following the conference from afar here are a few ways to do it:

(1) The World Water Week Website has the programme of talks/workshops and many of the presentations and abstracts available for download

(2) Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and Akvo.org are broadcasting a series of interviews with people at the conference called WaterCube.tv.  Watercube.tv seems to be uploading new clips VERY frequently and has had interviews with some really interesting people from all over the world.

(3) Try following some tweets here or here

Closing schools for poor sanitation?

I have blogged about different approaches used to encourage improved sanitation, but Uganda has again stepped it up (at least in theory).  Today’s Daily Monitor reports that Kampala City Council is closing schools that don’t conform to city sanitation standards.  While this may be a crucial step to show the importance of sanitation I have a few questions as to the cost vs. benefits of this approach.

-I wonder if these schools have funding to improve their own sanitation conditions.  If not, as I suspect, how could they possibly deal with this?

-What happens to the children from these schools?  Do they stay at home where the sanitation situation is presumably just as poor?  Are they forced to go to another school farther away that probably has a dismal student to teacher ratio?

Apparently they have already closed three schools….What is next?

Ugandan Primary School Students Painting a Latrine with Health Messages

Financing Sanitation

One of the many constant debates I have with myself is how to improve sanitation conditions for the rural and urban poor.  Numerous incentive schemes and methods are in action throughout the world including grants, subsidies, use of by-laws, and education.  While there may be anecdotal evidence of each methods’ merits, very few studies have actually demonstrated true sustained improvement in sanitation facilities and proper use.  Wading through all of the options and trying to understand what has been done before can be a painful task for someone just jumping into this field.   Thankfully the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) just released a new primer, Public Funding for Sanitation.

As this is a primer, there is not too much new information for those who have studied this issue, but this does have the types of schemes well laid out and described in a concise manner.  I would recommend reading the case study boxes, which talk about a few programs I had never heard about, and the subsidy type definitions.  In the end they talk about “Smart Financing” (a really nice buzz word, huh?) of sanitation which simply implies that one should use their brain before launching a massive sanitation scheme – duh.  This really is a difficult issue to deal with and this primer should add to the discourse.  Happy reading!

Malawi and the MGDs

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) released a paper yesterday that gives a comprehensive view on the state of water and sanitation in urban areas of Malawi through the lens of meeting the MGDs.   This paper, written by a Malawian Professor/Consultant, delves into the dismal state of urban poor in Malawi and essentially says that Malawi’s proclaimed achievements towards meeting the MGDs for Water and Sanitation are crap.

Official 2006 Malawi stats show that 96% percent of the urban population have access to potable water and 97% have access to sanitation.  Based on the results of this (albeit not an academically rigorous) study this situation is NOT likely!!  The real problem comes in defining what ACCESS really means…If it means that 5 households have a neighbor who has one primitive pit latrine that they can use once in a while – then may be that data could be plausible.  If access to water is defined by having a public tap that charges double the standard rate for potable (and many times not even clean enough to be considered potable) water and is only available at best for 6 hours a day (and sometimes not for a week at a time) – then the data could be plausible.

After living in Malawi for almost 2 years in a very nice area of the capitol, Lilongwe, I cannot believe this data.  Even in my posh neighborhood, we had days where no water flowed from the tap and other days where the water was brown.  If Malawi cannot provide reliable access to the wealthy, who are willing to pay anything for their water, how could they possibly claim to adequately serve the poor.

Malawi’s poor governance is surely to blame for this dismal situation but the international community and agencies like UNICEF also need step up.  UNICEF continues to pour money into WASH projects in Malawi and has not been able to strengthen the corrupt broken system within the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development (and MoH).  They have focused on spending their own money and meeting arbitrary goals (often times set by their donors) while letting the bureaucrats take them (and their money) for a ride.  Instead of focusing on drilling as many boreholes (regardless of location) as possible (with little investment for O&M), buying ArcGIS for each District Water Officer, and other marginally beneficial endeavors – UNICEF must step up , use their weight as the lead UN agency for water and sanitation, and try to honestly strengthen the system.  Why would UNICEF and others support false data about the Water and Sanitation situation in Malawi?  They too want to look good, right?  They don’t want to press the government too hard, right?  Make them think?  Hold them to more rigours standards for data collection? (ok ok enough UNICEF ranting for now but I promise to justify some of these claims in a future post)

Beating the MDG targets for Water, huh?

Here are a few interesting quotes from the paper:

“the policy to subsidize tariff to kiosks (MK44/m3) [in Blantyre] with the view that the poor should pay less for water is not achieving the intended results as the poor in the low-income area (kiosk customers) are paying three times (MK150–175/m3) more than the recommended tariff”. (Malawi Government, 2007c:75)

“Sanitation is under-emphasized in relation to water supply, despite the recognition of the inseparable link between them. Water supply is approached as an investment, while inadequate sanitation is regarded as an issue requiring increased education on hygiene behaviour. For
example, a sanitation marketing strategy has been developed to promote on-site sanitation, while for water supply an investment planning document 77 was prepared”