What strategy should be in place to ensure that the urban sector is not left behind in Hygiene and Sanitation as efforts have been concentrated on the rural sector?

Over time, it has become obvious that attention has been paid more to rural hygiene and sanitation leaving the urban sector unattended to as is clearly seen with the difficulty been encountered to handle solid and liquid waste in our cities. DFID, UNICEF, WaterAid and so many other internationaldevelopment organisations have sojourned in the rural areas with a view to bringing a change to the lives of the inhabitants there. The attention of various governments too have shifted to the rural areas because of the presence of these international development organisations leaving the urban sector to suffer neglect. It is common case to see wastes like refuse and human waste in certain areas for instance the major entry into Kano from Abuja via Kaduna which happens to be the major entrance into the town. What strategy should be in place to ensure that the urban sector is not left behind as is presently the case?

4 Answers

1. Acts and enforcement might just exclude or evict families from basic shelter or survival rights. Many of the times slums are located on enchroached land and they dont have entitlement rights to even have concrete structure. So investing on temporary land with fear of arousing eviction by state also another issue for which house / basic facility upgradation or investment incrementally with such level of uncertainty status does not happen, at least for Indian cities. The open defecation is not due to the choice but due to multiple socio-political and legal issues eg unavailability (due to land issue or financing)cohesiveness or absence of coverage due to urban rural bias even lack of credit for construction. With required support and legal, financial framework open defecation can be addressed rather than state policing mechanism.

2. The down story shows high population and if you go through this story you will notice implication of poor sanitation and hygiene will elapsed. For years, the people of Lake Chilwa in Malawi have depended on the lake for the food and income they need to survive. But today, Lake Chilwa is drying up due to climate change-induced droughts. Men, once skilled fisherman, are now leaving the community to look for other employment. The women and children left behind struggle just to get enough to eat. Lake Chilwa is not an isolated case. The challenges faced by this community are happening throughout Malawi, as well as 14 other African countries that are climate change hot spots. Hot spots are countries characterized by rapid population growth, low resilience to climate change, and a high unmet need for family planning. Many of these countries already face poverty, low levels of education, limited access to health services, and gender inequality.

3. I think that the focus on rural WASH is partly due to the way that surveys are being conducted. The absence of a toilet is far easier to detect than the presence of a dysfunctional, inaccessible, or otherwise unused toilet. This biases the numbers quite a bit, making it seem like rural areas are in much more dire need of WASH interventions than urban areas. Due to the sheer density of urban housing, toilets are close by to households and assumed to be accessible to the urban poor even though their actual functioning and accessibility are far from acceptable. The MDG guidelines for improved/unimproved toilets remain too broad and too superficial to reflect the actual state of sanitation that people experience, and surveys based on the guidelines are devised for speed and quantity rather than accuracy. A lot more money and time needs to be invested into evaluation processes to begin to combat the rural bias. Another probable reason for the focus on rural WASH is the predominant belief that urbanization is an advanced stage of development. Urban conditions are held as the standard, while rural conditions are judged against them, and deemed inadequate and backwards. Rural areas may lack sanitation, but they also experience less risk of water-related/water washed/vector diseases than urban areas that similarly lack sanitation. Inadequate WASH in densely populated areas quickly escalates to fatal diseases and epidemics, whereas OD practitioners in rural settings can experience few adverse health effects. If WASH prioritizes its target audience based on the severity of health risks rather than the presence or absence of sanitation facilities, there would be much more effort exerted in urban areas. After all, the goal of WASH is to improve health and well-being. We need to evaluate morbidity rates when determining what audiences we serve, rather than relying upon misleading and distorting data on the number of toilets we see.

4. I feel strict enforcement of Public Health policies could solve challenges of hygiene and sanitation in urban areas. Unlike in rural where land is available, most people in urban stay in rented houses that lack good sanitary facilities. Since houses without sanitary facilities are cheaper, most low-income families have no other option, but occupy houses with such poor status. Most urban informal settlements are typical locations without toilets and open defecation. I am currently managing WASH project in Kampala, within informal settlement along Port Bell railway line. What I noticed is that out of 7 zones, only one zone is well organised and clean. You will never see open defecation and solid waste is also well managed. Through interviews, we learnt that success of this well managed zone is due to local leaders charging house owners/ landlords responsible for sanitation. They could close down any house lacking latrine and place for keeping solid waste. They believe tenants may shift locations, but landlords will not and besides if they would like people to rent their houses, they must provide facilities for the occupants. In the same way, when I looked at Public Health Act of Uganda, it is clearly stipulated that any house intended for occupants must be provided with latrine facilities. It means if this public health act is enforced, many urban populations will automatically gain access to sanitation.