Water Pakistan

Water Hygenie and Sanitation Issues Of Pakistan

Are more people getting safe drinking water?

Filed under drinking water, hygiene, MDGs, Sanitation by admin

The UN claims early success in achieving global target but prevailing challenges point to a possible overestimation.

The UN announced that the international target to cut the number of people who do not have access to safe drinking water by half, has been met five years before the 2015 deadline.

“What is being measured is basically the type of improved technology that people are supposed to be accessing like a hand-pump or a tap in the house. What’s not being measured is whether it works, the quality, how far people have to walk to get to that water.”

- Patrick Moriarty, the International Water and Sanitation Centre

The report issued on Tuesday by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says that between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources such as piped supplies and protected wells.

It estimated that by the end of 2010 more than six billion people – around 89 per cent of the world’s population – had access to safe water.

That is one per cent more than the 88 per cent target set out in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) number seven, set in 2000.

The report also highlights the immense challenges that remain regarding the drinking water target. Global figures show massive disparities between regions and countries, and within individual nations.

For instance, 11 per cent of the world population, or about 783 million people, still have no access to improved drinking water.

There also are huge regional disparities with four out of 10 people without access to safe water living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Our biggest issue [in Pakistan] is treating wastewater and unfortunately we are not doing it except for a little in Islamabad and Karachi. Both industrial and domestic wastewaters are going to our freshwater and groundwater sources on the farms outside the city.”

- Muhammad Jahangir, the founder of Better Tomorrow

Almost half of the two billion people who gained access to drinking water since 1990 live in China or India.

Another disparity is the number of people in rural areas using unimproved water sources, which is five times greater than in urban areas.

And, eight out of 10 people living in urban areas have piped water connections on their premises, compared to only three in 10 people in rural areas.

Finally the UNICEF-WHO joint monitoring programme also warned that the data collected does not assess the quality, or reliability of the water supply, or whether water sources were sustainable.

As a result, it is likely that the number of people using safe water supplies has been overestimated.

Does this really show an early success for the MDG? How reliable is the UN report on safe drinking water?

Joining presenter Adrian Finighan on Inside Story are guests: Patrick Moriarty, in charge of the International Programme for the International Water and Sanitation Centre, a Netherlands-based NGO; Joakim Harlin, a senior water resources advisor at the UNDP; and Muhammad Jahangir, the founder of Better Tomorrow, an NGO focusing on water sanitation.

“This achievement serves as a beacon, a success story, an inspiration, it shows that the MGDs are achievable even if it is to a certain degree quite simplistic and a blunt tool. It nevertheless has had a huge role in galvanising political will and commitment… we should claim victory for that.”

Joakim Harlin, a UNDP senior water resources advisor
State of sanitation:

About 63 per cent of the world’s population uses improved sanitation facilities.

Since 1990, 1.8 billion people have gained access to such facilities.

But an estimated 2.5 billion people are still without it – almost three quarters of them live in rural areas.

In urban areas, eight out of 10 people use an improved sanitation facility, compared to only half of the rural population.

However, the number of people without improved sanitation in urban areas has grown by 183 million since 1990 during a time of rapid urbanisation.

The number of people having to go to the toilet in public has dropped by 271 million since 1990.

Still, around 1.1 billion people around the world use public spaces as toilets.

SOURCE

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/03/20123971528670749.html

 

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April 24, 2012 at 3:08 pm Comments (0)

MDG monitoring frame work and some suggestions for Pakistan

Filed under drinking water, hygiene, MDGs, Sanitation, Way forward, What's New by admin

Brainstorming Monitoring Framework- WASH

  1. Monitoring the data for improved water sanitation and Hygiene.
  2. The process of estimating improvement in water sanitation and hygiene has a two fold issue, for achieving the stipulated impact of improving the quality of life of our marginalized segment of society.
  • The objective envisages reducing the number of population being at a disadvantage due to poor quality water and sanitation into to half.
  • It is difficult to ascertain the bench mark figure to be reduced to half correctly, on which this analysis will be based.
  • The objective target is to change the status of drinking water to improved Water and sanitation.
  • Improved drinking water has very ambiguous set of non objective definitions, at places bottled water may not conform to this definition.
  • Obviously water could be either good for bad for drinking; changing it to an intermediate target of improved water and still getting sick may not be worth the effort.
  • A count of drinking water filtration plants in working condition may be a good indicator
  • A survey of drinking water quality of  a blanket type may be a good approach to establish the improvement
  • A documentation of efforts made to improve the drinking water quality could be another parameter
  • Some work like National water quality monitoring program (NWQM) by PCRWR, are good indicators hope they join this discussion.
  • Same goes for sanitation; it needs serious unpacking of the existing practices in our different geographical locations.
  • The issue is mixing untreated waste water (both domestic and industrial) with fresh water in storm drains and ground water via use in irrigation.
  • This flushing down our shit downstream is no sanitation. This in turn is depleting our soils of the crucial 6.3 Kg equivalent o NPK / head/annum of essential nutrients. Thus reducing our crop yield / Hectare and increased input costs further translating to unaffordable food supplies/ costs.
  • To cut short, there may be another way of estimating our progress towards achieving the targets of improved water and sanitation situation to upgrade the life of our common man in Pakistan is to see, what we have done to erase the effect of these common issues and how effective they have been, probably what we are trying to do today.
  • Let us Take a simple initiative of safe handling of the hospital waste, a major cause of recontamination through recycle of syringes and bags and else. The facility does have syringe cutters and at places incinerators.
  • I have seen within the hospitals this dangerous stuff being collected for resale and recycle from Abbot Abad to Khanewal. Causing recontamination and spread of blood related disorders.

 

In a way I am trying to promote another out of box approach to assess our progress towards improving the WASH status in Pakistan, which has a multiple cross cutting impact on our development indicators.

 

Let us objectively assess our initiatives towards combating poor quality water, sanitation and hygiene, if we are taking any?

See if our water fit for drinking at the start point, at the plant

Are the filtration plants supplying clean water?

Is water available in manageable distance (500M) range from the home?

 

How can we safely dispose of our waste water and viable solutions for replenishing the crucial soil nutrients, reduce fertilizer costs and improve food availability / security.

 

Let us make use of national water quality monitoring report, a good follow up of this survey can give us an eye opening data comparison of water quality status.

 

Hygiene is clubbed with Water and sanitation, we need to promote and measure clean hands for saving life. Let us survey how many schools, mosques, hospitals and public toilets have soap facility for hand washing.

 

So the objective is focus on the identification of issues, taking strategic initiatives to combat and then see the impact. Disease burden may be a good part/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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March 30, 2012 at 7:19 pm Comments (0)

Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health Newsletter

Filed under drinking water, House hold water Treatment systems (HWTS), hygiene, MDGs, Sanitation by admin

Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health
Newsletter N° 149 / 1 February 2012

Picture (Metafile)

JMP thematic report 2011 published
The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation published its 2011 thematic report Drinking Water: Equity, safety and sustainability. Based on the 2008 datasets, the report investigates access to and use of drinking-water in greater detail than is possible in the regular JMP progress reports, and includes increased disaggregation of water service levels and analyses of trends across countries and regions.  Download from www.wssinfo.org

 

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HWTS News
The WHO/UNICEF/UNC International Network on Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage will organize a HWTS session at the 6th World Water Forum on 14 March 14:30-16:30. The session will focus on the international target of having, by 2015, 30 additional countries with national policies regarding household water treatment and safe storage. Policy options will be linked to proven solutions, effective implementation and regulation. HTWS Network members attending the WWF6 are asked to contact Maggie Montgomery (montgomerym@who.int) who coordinates the HWTS target session.

 

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More HWTS News
HWTS Network members working closely with government counterparts are encouraged to assist their counterparts in completing the online HWTS survey available in English, French and Spanish. http://www.who.int/household_water/advocacy/en/

 

*-*-*-*Source

https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/1353812a97108c2e

 

February 1, 2012 at 10:08 am Comments (0)