sanitation

A Different Approach: School-Led Total Sanitation – Part 1

HydrateLife Health, Sanitation, WASH 4 Comments

As of 2011, sanitation coverage worldwide was at 64%.  With a worldwide population of just over seven billion this means that two and a half billion people still do not have access to improved sanitation facilities.  Of these people, just over one billion still practice open defecation.  Lack of proper sanitation and hygiene often leads to poor health and polluted water, which in turn leads to less production, less time in school, and many deaths worldwide. One methodology that iscontinue reading

Water Heroes : Anjali Sarker and Toilet+

HydrateLife Health, Sanitation, Water Heroes 6 Comments
Water Heroes : Anjali Sarker and Toilet+

Is there a monster under my bed?  Or maybe something lurking in my closet?  Probably not, but for a child growing up in a developed country these are the kinds of fears that can rule their bedtime.  Silly? Yes, and as a child grows up they will realize that it was all in their mind.  Anjali Sarker had a different fear growing up, and one that was actually based in reality.  While growing up in a rural Bangladeshi village Anjali’scontinue reading

Polluted Rivers: Argentina’s Matanza-Riachuelo River

HydrateLife Environment, Water Pollution 7 Comments

Today let’s travel to Argentina and take a look at the heavily polluted Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin.  This river (it’s actually more of an estuary), which meanders for 40 miles through Buenos Aires, has been heavily polluted for years by industrial waste, sewage, and everyday garbage.   For the seven million people that live near or along the river that means dirty water, dirty air, and a number of health problems. The pollution in this river is not new for Argentina.  Forcontinue reading

Saving Lives with Community-Led Total Sanitation

HydrateLife Health, Sanitation, WASH, Water Treatment 2 Comments

Without water people cannot survive, but without good sanitation and hygiene practices the water available could become contaminated and lead to disease and death.  Every year 1.5 million people, most of them children, die from complications associated with diarrhea that they picked up from dirty water.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 88% of diarrhea cases worldwide are linked to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene.  Diarrhea is caused by bacteria that get into the water system, andcontinue reading

Eco-Latrine of the Future: Tiger Toilets

HydrateLife Health, Sanitation, WASH, Water Technology 8 Comments

Sanitation is a huge problem in developing nations.  While the world has made significant progress on providing clean water to those who need it leaders have fallen behind when it comes to sanitation.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put sanitation as a high priority for their organization, and with that in mind they funded the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sanitation Ventures project.  Because most people in developing nations don’t have infrastructure to take away the wastecontinue reading

New Tech Helps Improve Sanitation in Jakarta Slums

HydrateLife Sanitation, WASH, Water Technology 5 Comments

Take a look at the picture above of a slum in Jakarta, Indonesia.  Now tell me how you would get a typical large sanitation truck through the slum in order to collect human “sludge”.  That’s a question that Mercy Corps’ Indonesian team asked themselves, and they came up with a great answer. In Indonesia 50,000 people die every year as a result of poor sanitation, most of them being in slums like the one above.  It’s understandable since none ofcontinue reading

PHAST: Helping People to Help Themselves

HydrateLife Health, Sanitation, WASH 1 Comment

Today I’m going to be talking about a methodology called PHAST that is used by organizations around the world and is based around the idea that for something to be successful you need to get the people it’s supposed to help involved.  PHAST, which stands for Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation, is a participatory method that engages communities and educates them on hygiene and sanitation as well as encouraging them to take responsibility for the management of water and sanitationcontinue reading

WASH and Equity Webinar – Part 2

HydrateLife Facts/Statistics No Comments

Welcome to part 2 of my WASH and Equity Webinar summary.  If you missed part 1 it’s below this post so just scroll down.  Let’s get started.  This first slide shows the inequality of urban drinking water coverage between the rich and the poor (note there’s a typo in the heading, the poorest 20% should say “left” end of the bar).  It’s pretty shocking and makes it very easy to see the divide between rich and poor.  This information wascontinue reading

WASH and Equity Webinar – Part 1

HydrateLife Facts/Statistics No Comments

Yesterday I listened in on a webinar give by Andrew Trevett – Senior Adviser, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, UNICEF, and Rolf Luyendijk, Senior Statistics and Monitoring Specialist, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, UNICEF.  The webinar talked about WASH and equity, focusing primarily on rural populations vs urban and was based off of a WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report on drinking water.  This presentation was talking mainly from a monitoring standpoint so it’s mainly a look at statistics gathered over the past 10continue reading

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