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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking at a Sustainable Future

Image
Hi and welcome to my final blog post! Over the past few weeks I have explored different issues relating to the water and sanitation crisis in Africa. For this final post, I will briefly explore the road to a sustainable future for Africa's water and sanitation.    Briefly mentioned in previous blogposts is Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) - to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 ( UN 2018 ). The proposal of SDG 6  is an improvement of the Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG 7) which targeted to decrease the population that did not have sustainable access to water and basic sanitation by 50% before 2015 but was not achieved. SDG 6 has additionally dimensions to address the faults of MDG 7, including affordability, accessibility, and water quality ( Weststrate et al. 2018 ).  Figure 1: Outline of SDG 6 Targets  Now that we are swiftly approaching 2030, it is important to track any progress and reflect...
Read more

It's natural, get over it! (Part 2: Menstrual Health Management)

Image
Subsequent to my previous post about menstruation and sanitation in SSA, I have decided to dig deeper and explore the different ways the situation can be helped. This includes exploring the different types of menstrual products, and the implementation of programmes that increase awareness and education in hope of losing the widespread taboo.  Menstrual Products  Studies confirmed that the lack of access to menstrual products and private latrines was a major barrier for school attendance and engagement for young girls. Most girls resort to use cloths as absorbents which leak and ruin uniforms making girls feel ashamed and uncomfortable.  The most commonly used menstrual products are disposable pads due to the convenience and level of accessibility. They are widely available, prevent leakage and are easy to use and dispose of in the low-quality latrines in the schools and across SSA villages generally. Though the supply of may not always be reliable and is not a long-...
Read more

World Toilet Day 2022

Image
As 'World Toilet Day 2022' is this weekend, I thought it would be best to focus this week's post on the importance of toilets as part of the sanitation crisis.  World Toilet Day (WTD) has been held annually since 2013 to raise awareness for the 3.6 billion people that are living with poor quality toilets which are detrimental to their health and environment . A part of the promise of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.2 is to 'end open defecation' by 2030 ( WHO ). This day is dedicated towards raising awareness to the fact that the world, despite being only 8 years from 2030, is far from being on track to achieving this goal ( WTD ). It's crazy to think that we currently live in a world where more people have access to a phone than to a safe toilet. The campaign of WTD 2022 is 'Making the invisible visible', to focus on the impact of the sanitation crisis on groundwater. Having inadequate sanitation systems leads to human waste contaminating rivers ...
Read more