Improved Water Sources - Lukaya, Uganda

Welcome back! This week's blog post will be exploring the issues surrounding faecal contamination and management of groundwater sources and hygiene facilities in Africa.

Before going any further, we must first try to understand what is meant by an 'improved water' source. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (2017) defines drinking water by the nature of their design and construction and having the potential to deliver safe water with 3 conditions: 

  1. Accessible on premises  
  2. Available when needed
  3. Free from faecal and chemical contamination

Although having adequate local water supply and sanitation facilities in low-income countries is critically important to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6, there still remains multiple cases where on-going monitoring and preservation of communal water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities are inadequate. More importantly, there is significant evidence which shows that 'improved water sources comprising a basic service' in line with the WHO/UNICEF criteria can still be susceptible to faecal contamination in underdeveloped areas (Nayebare 2020). Therefore, it may be useful to question the dishonesty of current 'improved water' sources and its alleged classifications stated by WHO and UNICEF and the poor level of faecal management from a top-down level. 

One of the case studies that stood out to me was Nayebare's (2020) research which opened my eyes to some shocking realities. Nayebare's study brings attention to the WASH conditions in Lukaya, a small town found in the Kalungu District of central Uganda. The study highlights the fragility of their on-site sanitation services where the current management and monitoring of these shared facilities are inadequate. The study disclosed that: 

  1. ~55% of improved water sources comprising primarily shallow hand-dug wells show gross faecal contamination by E.coli (Nayebare's 2020)
  2. 64% of the people in Lukaya town use unimproved sanitation facilities (Nayebare's 2020).
  3. 51% of on-site sanitation facilities are unimproved (Nayebare's 2020).

The inability to provide any equitably 'improved' water sources is presented in figure 1 which shows the high number of populations that do not have access to improved water sources. 

Figure 1: Number of people without access to an improved water source, 2020

The dishonest classification of improved water sources presents critical threats to health and livelihoods, specifically the increased risk to water-borne diseases. 53% of the global diarrhoea cases are from Africa, with the main source of transmission being faecal contaminated drinking water (Mutono et al. 2020). Approximately 88% of deaths caused by diarrhoea are traceable to unsafe water, inadequate hygiene, and poor sanitation (CDC). Diarrhoea kills 2,195 children every day, and if it doesn't kill them, it may lead to destructive impacts on childhood growth and cerebral development (CDC). These severe health threats result in subsequent negative social implications such as not being able to work, missing school, and medical costs, all of which are in the control of the government due to their inactivity and lack of provisions of adequate and safe sanitation systems. 

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