Health Improvement through Enhanced Rural Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene

According to the 2010 report of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, 884 million people do not have improved sources of drinking water. In addition, around 2.6 billion people do not use improved sanitation. It has also been found that majority of the people who have no access to water supply and sanitation are from rural areas. Because of these figures, an estimated 3.6 million people die each year from water-related diseases.

The Asian development Bank has launched different water supply and sanitation (WSS) projects to reduce the incidence of water-related diseases and improve the health and living conditions of rural communities. Evaluation and completion reports have yielded insights on how to improve projects to effectively attain health outcomes.

• Synergy between WSS, wastewater, solid waste, and hygiene development and management. Synergy must be strengthened through: commitment and focus; enough investment in sanitation; minimization of sanitation hazards of water supply systems; and effective management of solid waste and wastewater at both the household and community levels. In addition, project framework and design should be logical and realistic.
• Gender role acknowledgement. Because women have critical roles in family welfare, they must be involved not only in the promotion of awareness in personal hygiene, but also in designing and managing sanitation facilities in the community.
• Accessibility of the poor. Water sources, supply schemes, and sanitation technology options should be both accessible and affordable to the poor.
• Baseline and goal establishment. Baseline data must be in place to arrive at realistic goals and to guide the monitoring and implementation of the project. The absence of baseline data may lead to elusive measurement of project impact and outcome.
• Water supply sustainability. To minimize the risk of water shortages, groundwater investigations, effective water demand management, and public awareness campaigns must all be implemented. WSS project designs should also have demand forecasts that take into account population growth projections.
• Capacity building and partnerships. To ensure lasting developments in water supply and sanitation, projects must aim to build the capacity of beneficiaries and establish partnerships with appropriate organizations.

Source:

“Attaining Health Outcomes through Synergies of Rural Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene.” Learning Lessons, ADB Independent Evaluation, April 2011, from http://www.adb.org/evaluation/documents/lessons-health-wss.pdf.