Water and Sanitation

• Water @ UNSW

Events

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Global policies and related documents

Reports, guidelines and projects

• Alternative water sources and reuse: what are the public health issues? [editorial]
  "In Australia, in 2004, we are 6 years into another drought, and water shortages and increasing climate variability are behind efforts to reduce water consumption and find other, sustainable ways of utilising all available water. While current efforts concentrate on reducing per-capita water use through more efficient appliances and water restrictions, other, longer-term strategies are also needed. These pressures are leading the community to consider alternative sources of water for some household uses. At present, potable-quality water is supplied for all household purposes. But more than 50% of this water is used for gardens, toilets and laundry, where water of lesser quality would suffice. The domestic use of alternative water sources — rainwater, stormwater, greywater and sewage — has the potential to expose large populations to pathogens and chemical contaminants unless the water is appropriately treated and managed. These treatments can be complex, and, to further confound the issue, permissible applications vary by jurisdiction. There are also many gaps in the regulations for urban domestic uses." [MJA Vol 180, pp.260-261 (15 March 2004)]
• Citizen's report card on urban water, sanitation and solid waste services in Kenya: Summary of results from Nairobi
  "In 2006, a range of locally based stakeholders in Nairobi launched a Citizen Report Card (CRC) to obtain citizen's experiences on water supply, sanitation and solid waste services. The CRC tool is used to provide feedback to public service agencies on the strengths and weaknesses of their work. CRC's facilitate prioritization of reforms and corrective actions by drawing attention to the problems highlighted and facilitating cross fertilization of ideas and approaches by identifying good practices. The Kenya Alliance of Residents Associations (KARA), a locally based organization coordinated the initiative on behalf of a wider, multi stakeholder forum called the 'Nairobi City Consortium.' The consortium which was created as a platform to nurture dialogue around service, included service providers such as representatives of the Athi Water Services Board, the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company, the Councils' environment department, resident representatives and local civil society groups. The Water and Sanitation Program in Africa and the Public Affairs Foundation in India provided technical assistance to the process. The survey sought to examine citizen satisfaction and experiences in four main sectors namely water, sanitation, solid waste management and communication. The six themes identified for data analysis and presentation [in this World Bank report of December 2008] are organized into; i) availability, access and use of services; ii) perceptions of quality and reliability; iii) costs incurred by users; iv) transparency of service delivery; v) interactions with the service agencies; and vi) information provision."
• Developing a Toolkit to Improve Water Quality At Blacksands: A Demonstration of Solar Water Pasteurization
  "Vanuatu is fortunate in that much of the country has plentiful springs, streams, and rivers that provide drinking water for the rural population. Port Vila, the capitol of Vanuatu, is even luckier because Unelco, the water utility provider, provides piped water to most businesses and residences in town. However, just outside of town there is a settlement called Blacksands where there are severe water supply problems… Blacksands is a marginalized community of mostly low income households. There are no municipal water or sanitation services available in Blacksands. People in Blacksands are dependant on water from the Tagabe River or water from open boreholes to supply all of their water needs. Blacksands is situated at the mouth of the Tagabe River making it vulnerable to all upstream pollution. By the time the Tagabe River reaches Blacksands it is very polluted. The groundwater from the boreholes is also heavily contaminated with organic pollutants. Most households’ sanitation needs are met by pit toilets. As the water table is not very deep, the effluent from these toilets seeps readily into the groundwater making this water unfit to drink by any standards. As a result, residents of Blacksands are vulnerable to a wide variety of water based disorders, including: (i) Waterborne diseases. These are diseases which are the direct result of consuming contaminated water, such as diarrhea. (ii) Water-washed diseases. These are the effect of inadequate quantities of water for personal hygiene and/or the use of un-hygienic practices which contaminate water and cause disease. Without enough water, skin and eye infections are easily spread, as are the faecal-oral diseases. (iii) Water based diseases and water-related vector-borne diseases. These diseases are caused by standing water which provides an essential habitat for mosquitoes and other parasitic hosts that cause human diseases. Malaria is the obvious example of this type of disease... The primary objective of this project is to demonstrate ways to improve water quality in the Blacksands Area through solar water pasteurization" [Vanuatu Renewable Energy and Power Association, December 2005]
• Excreta Disposal in Emergencies: A Field Manual
  "This manual is designed for use by field-based technicians, engineers and non-technical staff responsible for sanitation planning, management and intervention in emergencies. The purpose of the manual is to provide practical guidance on how to select, design, construct and maintain appropriate excreta disposal systems to reduce faecal transmission risks and protect public health in emergency situations."
• Guidelines for drinking-water quality (fourth edition)
  This fourth edition of the World Health Organization’s Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality builds on over 50 years of guidance by WHO on drinking-water quality, which has formed an authoritative basis for the setting of national regulations and standards for water safety in support of public health. [publication overview] [World Health Organization, 2011]
• Hygiene, Sanitation, and Water: Forgotten Foundations of Health
  "Globally, around 2.4 million deaths (4.2% of all deaths) could be prevented annually if everyone practised appropriate hygiene and had good, reliable sanitation and drinking water. These deaths are mostly of children in developing countries from diarrhoea and subsequent malnutrition, and from other diseases attributable to malnutrition. How is an opportunity to prevent so many deaths (and 6.6% of the global burden of disease in terms of disability-adjusted life years or DALYs) failing to attract the attention of the international public health community? In this introductory paper to the PLoS Medicine series on water and sanitation, we develop the idea that these basic needs are the forgotten foundations of health." [PLoS Med 7(11): e1000367 (9 November 2010)]
• Hygiene, Sanitation, and Water: What Needs to Be Done?
  "As it stands, the world will not deliver the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets on water in many poor countries and on sanitation in most, let alone achieve the vision of universal access. This paper analyses the causes of poor national progress, discusses how these can be addressed, and highlights the potential roles of the various actors — especially the health sector — in tackling the challenges that lie ahead." [PLoS Med 7(11): e1000365. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000365 (16 November 2010)]
• Proceedings of the Pacific Regional Consultation on Water in Small Island Countries – Country Briefing Paper: Kiribati
  Like many countries in the Pacific, water is a crucial and political issue in Kiribati. As the population increases, the pressure on the water resources also increases – not to mention the climate change effect... In Kiribati three main bodies deal with water – Water Unit, Environmental Health and PUB. The role of the water unit includes the water resource manager, policies and legislation matters, and implementation of rural water projects. The Environmental Health Unit role includes chemical and bacterial testing of water supplies while PUB runs and operates the Water Supply system on South Tarawa. There are a number of visions, issues and constraints which Kiribati is or will be facing. These include lack of water, vulnerability to climate change, lack of community awareness, usage of appropriate technologies, and lastly the setting of an appropriate water tariff.
• Public health strategies for western Bangladesh that address the arsenic, manganese, uranium and other toxic elements in their drinking water
  Background: Over 60,000,000 Bangladeshis are drinking water with unsafe concentrations of 1 or more elements. Objectives: To evaluate and improve the drinking water testing and treatment plans for western Bangladesh. Methods: Groundwater from 4 neighborhoods in western Bangladesh was sampled to determine the distributions of arsenic (As), boron (B), barium (Ba), chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), pH, antimony (Sb), selenium (Se), uranium (U), and zinc (Zn). Results: The percentage of tubewells that had concentrations above World Health Organization (WHO) health-based drinking water guidelines were Mn 78%, U 48%, As 33%, Pb 1%, Ni 1%, and Cr 1%. Individual tubewells often had unsafe concentrations of Mn and As, or unsafe concentrations of Mn and U. They seldom had unsafe concentrations of both As and U. Conclusions: These results suggest that the ongoing program of identifying safe drinking water supplies by testing every tubewell for only As will not ensure safe concentrations of Mn, U, Pb, Ni, Cr, and possibly other elements. To maximize efficiency, drinking water testing in Bangladesh should be completed in 3 steps: 1) all tubewells must be sampled and tested for As; 2) if a sample meets the WHO guideline for As, then it should be retested for Mn and U; 3) if a sample meets the WHO guidelines for As, Mn and U, then it should be retested for B, Ba, Cr, Mo, Ni, and Pb. All safe tubewells should be considered for use as public drinking water supplies. [author abstract] [published in Environmental Health Perspectives]
• Sanitation and Health
  "Adequate sanitation, together with good hygiene and safe water, are fundamental to good health and to social and economic development. That is why, in 2008, the Prime Minister of India quoted Mahatma Gandhi who said in 1923, ‘sanitation is more important than independence’. Improvements in one or more of these three components of good health can substantially reduce the rates of morbidity and the severity of various diseases and improve the quality of life of huge numbers of people, particularly children, in developing countries. Although linked, and often mutually supporting, these three components have different public health characteristics. This paper focuses on sanitation. It seeks to present the latest evidence on the provision of adequate sanitation, to analyse why more progress has not been made, and to suggest strategies to improve the impact of sanitation, highlighting the role of the health sector. It also seeks to show that sanitation work to improve health, once considered the exclusive domain of engineers, now requires the involvement of social scientists, behaviour change experts, health professionals, and, vitally, individual people." [PLoS Med 7(11): e1000363. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000363 (2010)]
• Small-scale water supplies in the pan-European region. Background. Challenges. Improvements
  "The provision of safe, acceptable and sufficient drinking-water is a crucial prerequisite for human well-being. Small-scale water supplies are the backbone of water supply in rural areas in the entire pan-European region. Yet experience shows that they find such provision a challenge, for administrative, managerial, operational and resourcing reasons. This publication is intended to help decision-makers, such as policy-makers or regulators in the drinking-water sector, to appreciate better and address the particularities and characteristics of small-scale water supplies. It provides a range of background information, case studies and lessons learned, and ideas for addressing the issues in national programmes. Information for further reading as well as international networking activities is also provided." [WHO, 2011]
• Water Supply and Health
  "In poorly served countries, achieving the MDG water supply target will involve increasing water availability for domestic uses, improving water quality, and bringing about changed water-use and water-management habits. In the wealthy countries where adequate quantities of domestic water are already available on demand, the main task over the next few years will be to sustain water quality given the increasing pressures of pollution. However, global water supply targets need to be tempered by a recognition of the real demand (as expressed in user willingness and ability to pay), which may be less ambitious than the internationally agreed target. Furthermore, account needs to be taken of the realities of frequently poor levels of functionality. It is relatively easy to increase coverage through construction of water supply systems, but it is much more difficult to ensure that such systems continue to provide service over the long term. We therefore argue in this paper for a serious commitment by national governments and their partners to ensure adequate water supply services for all (the MDG target, if met, would still leave 672 million people with an unimproved supply). In addition, we call for increased attention to be paid to ensuring continuing service provision. This will mean finding new ways to enhance public demand for improved services (that might translate into a willingness to pay), and a public and private sector ethos that puts high value on the quality of construction and ongoing service delivery.” [PLoS Med 7(11): e1000361 (9 November 2010)]
• Water, sanitation and hygiene interventions to combat childhood diarrhoea in developing countries
  "This report is a synthetic review of impact evaluations examining effectiveness of water, sanitation and hygiene (WSH) interventions in reducing childhood diarrhoea. The review has been conducted to Campbell/Cochrane Collaboration standards of systematic review, as well as employing mixed methods of data analysis to assess not only which interventions are effective, or not, but why and under what circumstances… The results challenge the notion that water quality treatment in the household (at point-of-use) and sanitation ‘software’ (hygiene) interventions are necessarily the most efficacious and sustainable interventions for promoting reduction of diarrhoea… The study highlights the importance of behavioural factors in determining up-take and sustainable adoption of WSH technologies. Insights from diffusion theory suggest that preventive interventions tend to be adopted more slowly as benefits are difficult to observe and users presumably discontinue treatment as they perceive that the costs of using the intervention outweigh the benefits. These problems are more relevant for interventions aiming to reduce disease prevalence which do not have additional benefits, for example time savings. Unfortunately, few impact evaluations addressing sustainability collect data on the reasons for the levels of compliance and acceptance found among beneficiaries. This information is an essential guide to fostering long-term impact." [The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2009]

Educational resources

Organisations and Networks

• International Water Association - The International Water Association is a global network of water professionals, spanning the continuum between research and practice and covering all facets of the water cycle. IWA’s leading water professionals come from science, research, technology and practice. There are 10,000 individual and 400 corporate members, spread across 130 countries.
• Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council - "established in 1990 at the end of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. Its purpose is to maintain the momentum of the Decade, by providing a regular way for water and sanitation sector professionals to exchange views and experiences and develop approaches which will mean faster achievement of the goal of universal coverage" - this organization is co-sponsored by UNICEF and WHO.
• World's Water - "a site dedicated to providing up-to-date water information and data and web connections to organizations, institutions, and individuals working on a wide range of global freshwater problems and solutions."

UN and multinational

• WHO: Water
• WHO: Drinking water
• WHO: Sanitation

Government

• National Sanitation Policy of South Africa - this is a governmental policy paper (from 1996) outlining sanitation principles and policies for South Africa

Non Government

• IRC - International Water and Sanitation Centre - "Working with partners in developing countries, we aim to strengthen local capacities by sharing information and experience and developing resource centres. We emphasize the introduction of communication, gender, participation, community management and affordable technologies into water and sanitation programmes"
• Water for people - nonprofit organization that helps people in developing countries improve their quality of life by supporting sustainable drinking water, sanitation and hygiene projects. Established in 1991, WFP provides financial assistance -- and on a limited basis volunteer technical assistance -- to organizations and the people they work with in developing countries. Our commitment is to help people help themselves.

Academic Institutions with particular focus in this area

• Universities Water Information Network - everything you want to know about water and environment, excellent resources.

Key Conferences, conference and workshop reports

Journals, Newsletters, Forums

Bibliographies, Libraries

Public health bookshops

• Public Health bookshop