Author: RWSN Secretariat

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Uganda: Kitgum Residents Share Water Points With Animals

Interesting article in relation to recent RWSN discussions on Multiple Use Services (MUS) of water

Water Journalists- Africa's avatarWaterSan Perspective

Dan Michael Komakech
June 23, 2014

Residents of Toboi in Lolwa parish Orom Sub County in Kitgum district have resorted to sharing contaminated rain runoff water that collects on rock inselbergs with animals due to scarce water points in the vicinity.

The resident explain that they survive on dirty unprotected water from Lela Toboi inselberg because of the far distance of over three to seven kilometers that one has to trek in search of clean drinking water in the neighboring villages of Wipolo and Tikau and Karekalet river spring.

The situation has rendered residents particularly the most vulnerable elderly, disability and children to opt for nothing other than runoff water from contaminated sources which makes them exposed to water borne diseases and death.

“If it rains we utilize rain runoff water that gathers on these inselberg and if it dries off we trek to Wipolo aor Tikau where we are…

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Cautiously optimistic

More useful analysis from the Triple-S team

Sarah Carriger's avatarwater services that last

What will it take to create WASH sectors that work? 

By Patrick Moriarty, Harold Lockwood, and Sarah Carriger

Over the past few months in a series of posts we’ve been advocating for a change in the goal of the WASH sector – from increasing coverage to delivering a service over the long haul; from simply building infrastructure to building infrastructure and managing it into the future to provide services worthy of the name.

And we’ve been calling for a change in approach — from piecemeal projects to strengthening the whole system that delivers services.

We’ve shown how we’ve gone about supporting this type of change in Ghana together with the Community Water and Sanitation Agency, and we’ll continue posting examples from other countries where we’re working.

For now, in the final post in this series, we’d like to talk more about what committing to this change calls for from…

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“FLUORIDE IN GROUNDWATER: A DEBILITATING SCOURGE” Catalyst Project Webinar, 2 May

Reposted from: http://www.thewaterchannel.tv/index.php/dossiers/the-underground-drought/659-gw-webinars

“Fluor is an element abundant in nature. In the right quantities, it is essential for the development of teeth and bones. However, under specific conditions, the concentration of fluoride (F) in ground and surface water can exceed safety levels and becomes toxic for human health. This may lead to skeletal and/or dental fluorosis, two chronic biogeochemical diseases that occur in various countries around the world.

According to UNESCO, more than 200 million people worldwide rely on drinking water with fluoride levels exceeding the present World Health Organization (WHO) norm of 1.5 mg/l. The Ethiopian Central Rift Valley (ECRV) is one of the most affected areas with an estimated 8 million people potentially at risk of fluorosis. Due to its geology and climate, it suffers from some of world’s highest concentrations of fluoride, mainly in deep wells in the semi-arid parts.

Dr Redda Tekle Haimanot and Seifu Kebede (Addis Ababa University) have studied the fluoride problem in the ECRV region for several years. In this webinar, they will discuss the magnitude of the problem, the risk factors and socio-economic consequences. The speakers will also discuss preventive measures that hold promise, and why they are relevant to other parts of the world suffering from high fluoride levels.

Date: May 02, 2014
Time: (To be confirmed)
How to participate:
1) Go to https://metameta.adobeconnect.com/fluoride/
2) Choose ‘Enter as Guest’
3) Enter a screen name
4) That’s it! You can now listen to the speakers, see their slides, ask them questions and share comments/questions”

Understanding why waterpoints fail

By Vincent Casey, Technical Support Manager, and Richard Carter.  (originally posted on the WaterAid website)

Long, expensive & messy: the realities of sector change

Latest update from Triple-S

Sarah Carriger's avatarwater services that last

By Patrick Moriarty, Harold Lockwood, Vida Duti and Sarah Carriger

In the last post in this series we described our approach to changing the whole system to deliver water services that people can count on: not just for a few years, but for life. We laid out the main phases in this change: initiation, learning and testing, and finally scaling-up and systemic impact. In this post we’d like to show you what that looks in the real world, using the example of our work in Ghana under the Triple-S (Sustainable Services at Scale) project.

One of the reasons we chose to work in Ghana was that it was typical of many countries: they’d made significant progress in increasing coverage, but they had significant problems, particularly in their rural water sector, with lack of financing for repairs and replacements, weak supply chains for spare parts, and poor support from local government…

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Timor Leste – a service delivery state of mind

Some experiences from Timor Leste

editor's avatarwater services that last

By Harold Lockwood  –

Last week I was in Timor Leste supporting some of the work of WaterAid Australia and its programme in Timor Leste. As this has evolved over the last several years, and with coverage levels increasing, WaterAid Timor-Leste (WATL) has recognised the pressing challenge of maintaining service levels in those communities who have gained first time access to water supply. The Government of Timor-Leste has pledged to meet its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to provide 78% of the population with access to a safe water supply by 2015 (75% of the rural population and 86% of the urban population). The JMP update for 2013 records access in 2011 to an improved water source as 69%: 60% rural and 93% urban. As of 2013 steady progress is being made and it has been determined that the MDG for water supply will be met.

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UPGro research paper on Sketetal Flurosis in Ethiopia

New paper by Redda Tekle-Haimanot, Gebeyehu Haile, part of the “Improving access to safe drinking water_prospection for low-fluoride sources Groundwater” Catalyst Project

ABSTRACT This study compared the occurrence of skeletal fluorosis in chronic consumers of locally brewed alcoholic beverages and their matched controls in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. The study revealed that chronic alcohol consumers developed severe forms of crippling skeletal fluorosis quite early in life. The controls were either symptom-free or exhibited mild forms of the fluorosis. The study showed that crippling skeletal fluorosis was directly associated with the large volumes of the locally brewed beer and honey-mead consumption on a daily basis. Chemical analysis of the alcoholic beverages showed that high concentration of fluoride which was much higher than the fluoride in the water was used for the brewing process. From this study one would conclude that in communities residing in high fluoride areas, there should be awareness creation campaigns to point out the relationship of excessive consumption of locally brewed alcoholic drinks and skeletal fluorosis. Regulations should also be put in place to require producers of local alcoholic beverages to use low fluoride water for brewing.

Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 2014, 6, 149-155
Published Online February 2014 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jwarp)
Download the paper here: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jwarp.2014.62020

Musings from Mopti

Well digging - Mali (RWSN/Skat)
Well digging – Mali (RWSN/Skat)

by Jonathan Annis, WASHPlus

I’ve spent the last week in the Mopti Region of northern Mali supporting a USAID/WASHplus WASH & Nutrition initiative led by CARE. While behavior change communication related to household- and community-level sanitation, hygiene, and infant nutrition practices is the primary focus of the project, a small sum of funds is dedicated to rehabilitating community water supplies.

The conditions in Mali, as in much of the Sahel, have attracted a plethora of international NGOs, foundations, and do-gooders of every size and intention; increasing access to safe water is a focal point of many of their interventions. The functionality of rural water supplies in Mopti is difficult to ascertain. A number of my colleagues agree that the database of water points maintained by the regional office of the Ministry of Water includes less than 50 percent of the water points existing in the countryside.

Continue reading “Musings from Mopti”