Why real progress to fix sanitation is still far away

By Simon J Mone

The sanitation drive has been going on for as long as we know. About every attempt seems to have been made with the aim of ensuring that communities practice very good sanitation. But on a daily basis, we see many practices that are not worthy of a place in hygienic societies.

Open disposal of human waste is still among the major problems that will not go away soon. Individuals, households and societies have refused to sustain good sanitation habits. As if they are not being told every day to practice good manners. With these practices, you do not want to see the statistics because if you do, then you will wonder where the logistics and resources meant for sanitation deliverables have been thrown.

Despite all the million Dollars being thrown at sanitation initiatives, from the time of the Millennium Development Goals, then to the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, we still cannot speak with certainty that Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) objectives have been delivered well enough.

We cannot WASH our hands off cholera, dysentery and all else that are plaguing us. It is a major affront to the dignity of especially vulnerable groups. It is a hurdle too high for communities to navigate in order to start engaging in meaningful development initiatives. So where will the next innovations on WASH come from? Maybe we should get back to WASH basics.

Collect real evidence of people that own toilets and those that use latrines, not only in the rural areas, but also in the urban areas. You could be shocked at some findings about latrine use. And have not yet opened the story about clean water access.

To break the deadlock, let us get the actual statistics and see how to fill up the missing link. The serious absence of the ability to measure out actual statistics represents a very serious gap in a major development goal. It is a major obstacle because communities will not get out of it, if they cannot tell how many homesteads there are with/without a latrine.

They will end up spending all their savings in the hospital treating dysentery and others. What is a fact is that the barriers to the current usage of latrines in our communities relate to; culture, knowledge, bad attitudes and practices to latrine use and poor quality of latrines. If these can change for better, it will do a lot of good. Let us re-brand these major obstacles to make better progress towards 2030.

This is a must because even when finally latrines have arrived, then we need to talk about effectively manage in order to avoid diseases. There is the need to incessantly promote and improve WASH behaviours like hand washing as a means of preventing WASH-related illnesses.

Clearly, information has trickled down to people, of what they should do or not do in order to stay free from sanitation-related illnesses and remain healthy. Knowledge of hand washing is one simple fact known to reduce the chance of somebody catching preventable diseases by about 50%. But this is not happening.

Why? It means that the knowledge is never practiced. Another hurdle to leap over is to enforce hand washing facilities and latrines at homesteads.

Until we can genuinely answer these basic questions, we will always remain at the stage where the knowledge exists but where nothing goes beyond knowledge. Since at this moment, there is no doubting that everybody can mention the importance of washing hands with soap before eating and after visiting a toilet. Everybody knows that drinking water should be properly treated and stored.

Everyone knows the importance of using a toilet. But things have gone haywire at times. Therefore, real progress on WASH still remains in our distant dreams.

The writer is a civil engineer