The impact of water and sanitation access on housing values: The case of Dapaong, Togo

February 11, 2014 · 0 comments

The impact of water and sanitation access on housing values: The case of Dapaong, Togo, 2014,

Johanna CHOUMERT, et al.

The international community has made a commitment that aims to halve, by 2015, the number of people without access to safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation systems. In Togo, the government struggles to provide the population with access to water and sanitation, despite a proactive policy. We argue that a connection to safe water and sanitation increases housing values.

Using collected data from the city of Dapaong, we develop a hedonic price model to capture the relationship between housing values and their characteristics. Our results support the need to accompany any investment in access to water and sanitation with real estate policies, so that the poorest households remain beneficiaries of the pro-poor policies.

WASH, Environmental Enteropathy, Nutrition, and Early Child Development: Making the Links

February 11, 2014 · 0 comments

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), Environmental Enteropathy, Nutrition, and Early Child Development: Making the Links. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan 2014.

Full text | Download other articles from this issue

Authors: Francis M. Ngure, et al.

This study reviews evidence linking WASH, anemia, and child growth, and highlight pathways through which WASH may affect early child development, primarily through inflammation, stunting, and anemia. Environmental enteropathy, a prevalent subclinical condition of the gut, may be a key mediating pathway linking poor hygiene to developmental deficits. Current early child development research and programs lack evidence-based interventions to provide a clean play and infant feeding environment in addition to established priorities of nutrition, stimulation, and child protection. Solutions to this problem will require appropriate behavior change and technologies that are adapted to the social and physical context and conducive to infant play and socialization. The authors propose the concept of baby WASH as an additional component of early childhood development programs.

UNICEF – Handwashing Promotion: Monitoring and Evaluation Module

February 3, 2014 · 0 comments

Handwashing Promotion: Monitoring and Evaluation Module, 2013. UNICEF.

Prepared by Jelena Vujcic, MPH and Pavani K. Ram, MD, University at Buffalo.

This guide will walk you through planning and implementing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for your handwashing promotion programme. Programmes that promote handwashing are diverse and vary in scope. The content of this module is designed to be adapted to a variety of programmes. In this guide, you will be
introduced to:

  • The 7 major steps of monitoring and evaluating handwashing promotion.
  • Choosing indicators appropriate to the programme’s objectives.
  • Collecting the necessary data, and sample questions for indicators relevant to handwashing advocacy, education and behaviour change.
  • Health impact measurement and caveats for the inclusion of health impact assessment as part of an M&E plan.

The Application of Participatory Research to Optimize a Household Water Treatment Technology

January 29, 2014 · 1 comment

The Application of Participatory Research to Optimize a Household Water Treatment Technology in a Poor and Marginalized Community of Chennai, India, 2014.

MacDonald, Morgan. University of Guelph.

This research provides an authoritative perspective on the importance of collaborative innovation for the development of sustainable household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) in Mylai Balaji Nagar, a low-income, peri-urban community in Chennai, India.

The use of HWTS to improve drinking water quality and reduce the burden of diarrhoeal diseases in poor and marginalized communities in the developing world has received considerable attention. However, the technologies proposed by foreign researchers and engineers are often designed without the involvement of local people, and often neglect the cultural heterogeneity of the low income communities they’re intended for. Participatory action research (PAR) encourages a two-way exchange of information that promotes collaborative learning and increases the likelihood of sustainable development. This research employed a PAR framework to promote community control and stimulate local participation in a user-centered approach to HWTS design. Complementary evidence is presented on the importance of appropriate technology that places greater emphasis on the social determinants of user satisfaction.

A twelve month randomized controlled trial of the collaboratively designed HWTS revealed significant reductions of indicator bacteria in intervention household drinking water, with mean log reductions of 1.54 (95\% CI: 1.35 – 1.73) for \emph{E.} coli and 1.92 (95\% CI: 1.76 – 2.08) for total coliforms. Bacterial concentrations in treated water were higher during the monsoon season than the dry season, indicating that water quality may vary according to seasonality in tropical countries with monsoon rains. Additionally, survey data established that households with “high” perceptions of treated water taste, colour, and odour were more than three times more likely to comply with treatment instructions than were households with “very low” perceptions.

Aquagenx Compartment Bag Test Awarded USAID Pioneers Prize Honorable Mention

January 29, 2014 · 0 comments

Aquagenx Compartment Bag Test Awarded Prestigious USAID Pioneers Prize Honorable Mention | Source: Aquaenx

The Compartment Bag Test (CBT) is recognized as a major breakthrough in science and technology that delivers an accessible solution that meets the urgent need for ongoing water quality monitoring to help solve the global water crisis.

Chapel Hill, NC, January 22, 2014 – Aquagenx, LLC, a provider of innovative microbial water quality testing products that detect potential health risks, was awarded a USAID Pioneers Prize for its Compartment Bag Test (CBT), a simple, portable water quality test that lets anyone, anywhere quantify fecal bacteria in drinking water without needing electricity, laboratories, refrigeration, technicians or expensive equipment.

USAID selected the Aquagenx CBT for an Honorable Mention award as one of 15 total winners out of nearly 90 entrants in the competition, which is the first-ever USAID Science and Technology Pioneers Prize contest. The purpose of the USAID Pioneers Prize is to seek out new, technologically sophisticated ways of delivering services and achieving development outcomes.

The CBT solves major challenges for bacteriological water quality testing and ongoing monitoring in low resource and disaster settings by enabling onsite testing, eliminating the need to send water samples to a laboratory and wait for lab sample analysis and processing. Testing can be done in the field by anyone with little training, individuals in a household as well as scientists, and is completed in a few steps that generate easy to score, visual, color change results that quantify the amount of E. coli bacteria in a 100 milliliter water sample.

Portable and compact, a CBT Kit is self-contained and includes all supplies needed for 10 tests that fit in a small box, ideal for travel and remote locations. The CBT also includes built-in decontamination.

Dr. Mark D. Sobsey is co-inventor of the CBT and a Keenan Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. He is internationally known for research, teaching and service in environmental health microbiology and virology and in water, sanitation and hygiene, with more than 200 published papers and reports.

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USAID Global Waters, Jan 2014 – Tapping into the Power of Women

January 29, 2014 · 0 comments

USAID Global Waters, Jan 2014 – Tapping into the Power of Women

Women are half of the world’s population, but their voices too often go unheard. The USAID Water and Development Strategy prioritizes empowering women and promoting gender equality through water programs. We dedicate this edition of Global Waters to these key issues.

Contents

  • On the importance of empowering women – The Ripple Effect
  • Social entrepreneur Gemma Bulos on the necessity for women’s leadership – Transforming Traditional Roles
  • Empowering women to improve their communities – Bridging the Gender Gap
  • A stronger role for women in Senegal’s fisheries – Integrating Gender Into Our Work
  • A conversation with Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Director Vikki Stein
  • Currents

An open faucet

January 28, 2014 · 0 comments

An open faucet | Source/complete article: Frank Bergh, Contributing Editor, Engineering for Change News, Jan 4, 2014.

Excerpts – High in the mountains of El Salvador in Central America there is a village called Solemán. This outcropping of only 20 houses is small, but it offers a profound example of the technical humanitarian challenges of the future.

….

At night, when electricity is cheapest, Solemán runs the pump until the tank is full. Each morning at 6:00 a.m. someone opens the valves to allow water to flow to each household’s faucet tap. Invariably the tank is empty by 6:30 a.m. At first I was surprised to see that these families consumed thousands of gallons of water in only 30 minutes, but then I was told that most households don’t use their share of the water even over the course of 48 hours. It’s just that no one had ever turned off their faucet.

The author, Frank Bergh (left), surveys for a water distribution system in the Salvadoran village Mariñon, which neighbors Solemán. Photo by Andrea Heugatter

Each family’s faucet pours their morning water supply into a pila. When I asked one woman in Solemán, Mama Hilda, why she never closed her water faucet, she replied that the neighbors would not close theirs, so her family would be the only one without water. Without any assurance of the neighbors’ behavior, no household dared to shut off its faucet. Regardless of the sophistication of their water distribution system, these people had each chosen to forego the benefits of running water simply out of mutual distrust.

I visited Solemán in May 2006 with a team of Engineers Without Borders-USA as we surveyed the land to prepare for the design of an analogous system in the village of Mariñon. This story and the image of an open faucet is so vivid to me, because I believe it is emblematic of the challenges to be faced in the fight against poverty around the world.

The spirit of the village of Solemán, that they rallied together to build the tank and lay the pipe side-by-side with neighbors, gives me so much hope. However, their urge to stockpile the water rather than share it reminds me that collectively, we still have a long way to go. The technical know-how for a brighter and more peaceful future is available today. So much of the injustice and strife in our world is only a matter of inadequate distribution. Whether the problem is wealth versus poverty, surrounded versus lonely, oppressor versus oppressed, obesity versus hunger, farmstead versus slum… all stem from a tendency to accumulate rather than distribute.

 

 

EAWAG – Course on Introduction to HWTS

January 23, 2014 · 0 comments

EAWAG – Online Course on Introduction to Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage

This 5 week online course starts on April 7th, 2014. Learn about the most important water treatment methods at household level, successful implementation strategies and about assessing the impact of Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage.

In this course, you will learn about the public health impacts of unsafe drinking water and about different methods to treat water at household level. The course takes a closer look at the roles of different stakeholders, such as governments, private sector, and NGOs. How can HWTS reach the most vulnerable populations at scale? And how can the impact of HWTS be measured?

The MOOC “Introduction to Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage” will answer these questions with a series of concrete examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Country clustering applied to the water and sanitation sector: A new tool

January 23, 2014 · 0 comments

Country clustering applied to the water and sanitation sector: A new tool with potential applications in research and policy. Int J Hyg Environ Health. 2014 Mar;217(2-3):379-85. doi: 10.1016/j.ijheh.2013.07.017.

Authors: Onda K, Crocker J, Kayser GL, Bartram

The fields of global health and international development commonly cluster countries by geography and income to target resources and describe progress. For any given sector of interest, a range of relevant indicators can serve as a more appropriate basis for classification. We create a new typology of country clusters specific to the water and sanitation (WatSan) sector based on similarities across multiple WatSan-related indicators. After a literature review and consultation with experts in the WatSan sector, nine indicators were selected. Indicator selection was based on relevance to and suggested influence on national water and sanitation service delivery, and to maximize data availability across as many countries as possible.

A hierarchical clustering method and a gap statistic analysis were used to group countries into a natural number of relevant clusters. Two stages of clustering resulted in five clusters, representing 156 countries or 6.75 billion people. The five clusters were not well explained by income or geography, and were distinct from existing country clusters used in international development. Analysis of these five clusters revealed that they were more compact and well separated than United Nations and World Bank country clusters.

This analysis and resulting country typology suggest that previous geography- or income-based country groupings can be improved upon for applications in the WatSan sector by utilizing globally available WatSan-related indicators. Potential applications include guiding and discussing research, informing policy, improving resource targeting, describing sector progress, and identifying critical knowledge gaps in the WatSan sector.

Why “improved” water sources are not always safe

January 23, 2014 · 1 comment

Why “improved” water sources are not always safe. WHO Bulletin, Jan 2014.

Authors: Amer Shaheed, et al.

Existing and proposed metrics for household drinking-water services are intended to measure the availability, safety and accessibility of water sources. However, these attributes can be highly variable over time and space and this variation complicates the task of creating and implementing simple and scalable metrics.

In this paper, we highlight those factors – especially those that relate to so-called improved water sources – that contribute to variability in water safety but may not be generally recognized as important by non-experts. Problems in the provision of water in adequate quantities and of adequate quality – interrelated problems that are often influenced by human behaviour – may contribute to an increased risk of poor health.

Such risk may be masked by global water metrics that indicate that we are on the way to meeting the world’s drinking-water needs. Given the complexity of the topic and current knowledge gaps, international metrics for access to drinking water should be interpreted with great caution. We need further targeted research on the health impacts associated with improvements in drinking-water supplies.

 

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