More than 70 per cent of the population in Eastern and Southern Africa (340 million people) have no access to basic sanitation services.
Among these, 98 million people (19 per cent) practise open defecation, 179 million use unimproved facilities and 63 million shared sanitation facilities. Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, have by far the largest number of people in the region with no access to basic sanitation services, while countries like Eritrea, South Sudan and Ethiopia have the largest proportions and numbers of people practising open defecation.
The numbers who don’t have access to basic hygiene services are even higher (386 million) as more than per cent of the population in the region don’t wash hands with soap and water. In schools, for example, over 50 million (27 per cent) school-age children have no access to sanitation services while 117 million (62 per cent) have no access to handwashing facilities in schools.
The greatest concern in the region is the pace of increase in access on basic sanitation services. Access to basic sanitation services in communities has only increased by 6 per cent since 2000 and projections showing that only 36 per cent of the population will be having access to basic sanitation services by 2030. While efforts to eliminate open defecation in many countries are on course, too many households are too low on the sanitation service ladder, with every risk of being stuck there. Those in rural areas start using unimproved sanitation facilities, while those in urban areas, start using sharing facilities. The need to move populations along the service ladder – not just away from open defecation – is paramount. In institutions, programming in WASH needs to go to scale, as so far it has been limited.
Sanitation sector financing has been identified as the greatest obstacle in efforts to accelerate the pace in sanitation service delivery. In addition, current approaches used in creating demand for sanitation need to be better adapted to changing economic and demographic shifts, to make them more effective.
The WASH SDG sanitation ambition goes beyond containment to other parts of the sanitation supply chain. These other parts largely characterize urban and small towns sanitation systems. Unlike rural areas where access to a good toilet largely equates to good sanitation, in urban areas, more infrastructural investments are needed to ensure that faecal matter is emptied, transported, treated and reused/disposed safely. This only needs development of service and management models to ensure sustainable functionality of these systems.
Urban areas and small towns have been identified as epicenters for cholera due to poor sanitation and hygiene practices. In addition, the region is experiencing an increasing shift of populations from rural to urban areas and an exponential growth of small towns, which has great implications on UNICEF programming, which has been mainly rural.
A Guest Editorial