Launch of the Violence, Gender and WASH Toolkit
Gender-based violence (GBV) is rarely out of the news, around the world shocking cases of abuse are reported on a daily basis.
Policy and advocacy for sanitation
Hygiene and health: systematic review of handwashing practices worldwide and update of health effects
The purpose of this article was to obtain key inputs for the development of the first regional and global estimates of handwashing with soap following faecal exposure, in
view of updating the estimates of the burden of disease for the impact of this behaviour on diarrhoeal disease. The authors systematically reviewed the prevalence of the relevant hand dhygiene practices worldwide and updated the evidence linking hand hygiene practices to the prevention of diarrhoea. In both cases, they present adjusted estimates
Date: 12 June 2014
Hygiene, Sanitation, and Water: Forgotten Foundations of Health
Every year, around 2.4 million deaths worldwide (4.2% of all deaths) could be prevented if everyone practised appropriate hygiene and had good, reliable sanitation and drinking water. The majority of these deaths are children in developing countries dying from diarrhoea and subsequent malnutrition, and from other diseases attributable to malnutrition.
How is an opportunity to prevent so many deaths (and 6.6% of the global burden of disease in terms of disability-adjusted life years or DALYs failing to attract the attention of the international public health community?
Date: 12 June 2014
Burden of disease from inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene in low- and middle-income settings: a retrospective analysis of data from 145 countries
The results of this analysis confirm the importance of improving water and sanitation in low- and middle-income settings for the prevention of diarrhoeal disease burden. The article also highlights the need for better data on exposure and risk reductions that can be achieved with provision of reliable piped water, community sewage with treatment and hand hygiene.
Date: 12 June 2014
The battle for toilets and minds
Sanitation experts have long known that latrine use is what is needed, and that this is not always implied by mere latrine construction in rural India. The SQUAT (Sanitation Quality Use Access and Trends) survey conducted by the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (rice) shows clearly that it's behaviour change not hardware that's the issue.
The Badaun murder: violence, vulnerability and safer sanitation
Blog by Shilpi Srivastava, DPhil Student at the Institute of Development Studies responding to the recent rape and murder of two teenage girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, India, highlighting the links between gender-based violence and sanitation.
The cost of a knowledge silo: a systematic re-review of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions
Divisions between communities, disciplinary and practice, impede understanding of how complex interventions in health and other sectors actually work and slow the development and spread of more effective ones. This hypothesis was tested by re-reviewing a Cochrane-standard systematic review (SR) of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions’ impact on child diarrhoea morbidity: can greater understanding of impacts and how they are achieved be gained when the same papers are reviewed jointly from health and development perspectives?
Date: 5 June 2014
Knowledge Summary on the impact of Water, sanitation and hygiene on reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health
The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health has put together an overview of the benefits of WASH for reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health (RMNCH).
Date: 30 May 2014
Open defecation level drops in Ghana
According to the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), the rate of open defecation in Ghana has dropped by 5% in the last two years. Speaking on ‘Clean Communities’ on the Joy News channel on Multi TV, Emmanuel Addai stated that, “figures that came out in 2012 said open defecation rates in Ghana was 24%, but the estimated figure for 2014, from the source, the Joint Management Programme (JMP), is 19%.” The Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural development has attributed the result to the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme.
Sanitation cartoons- results from a SuSanA and GIZ competition
SuSanA and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) held a sanitation-themed cartoon competition. The spirit of the competition was to create cartoons which would get people to laugh and talk about sanitation - towards breaking the taboo around sanitation! The winners and other entries are now featured in this cartoon gallery- serious fun!
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