Improving rural public health through ‘best practice’ water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives

Abstract

An understanding of best practice rural water, sanitation and hygiene (rWASH) and its associated indicators can ensure greater success and reduced failure of future projects. While numerous organisations have actively implemented rWASH projects since the early 1990s with donor reports, funding proposals and reviews frequently claiming best practice, there remains a paucity of information on what constitutes 'best practice' rWASH. A scoping review of qualitative and quantitative literature was done with six primary factors identified as key contributors to best practice rWASH: regulatory environment, community ownership, programme methodology, funding, technology and capacity. In the absence of standardisation, a benchmark of proven techniques may be used as an alternative to identify 'best practice' within the sector and propose minimum requirements for the development of best practice rWASH. Clearly defining best practice rural water, sanitation and hygiene is useful for governments, donor agencies and implementing organisations and those monitoring outcomes of programmes against national and global targets.

Perceptions of Teachers in Training on Water Issues and Their Relationship to the SDGs

“…The 2030 Agenda proposes 169 targets to be achieved globally through 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), so that societies are able to respond to the current situation. Sustainable water management is related to various SDGs, among which it is worth highlighting global access to food and the eradication of hunger (SDG 2) [11][12][13]16,28], good health and well-being (SDG 3) [8,9,11,13,15,17,18,22,26,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50], quality education (SDG 4) [32,33,38,39], clean water and sanitation (SDG 6) [7,[13][14][15]27,[42][43][44]46,47,51], sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) [6,8,12,13,17,[26][27][28]…”

Sağlık tesislerinde su, sanitasyon ve hijyen hizmetlerine erişimin iyileştirilmesi

“…If we aim to attain the universal health coverage, WASH is an essential and integral component, and the present status depicts an unacceptable health risk exposing millions of people to an unhealthy and unsafe world 2 . In order to improve the existing scenario, a series of steps have been proposed with an aim to formulate national plans, set targets, upgrade infrastructure and involve local communities 3,4 . The first and foremost step is to perform a situation analysis (pertaining to existing policies, financial support, etc.)…”

“…Further, it has been concluded that the WASH services are below standard in all the regions of the world 1 . Moreover, it is important to note that such circumstances not only enhances the incidence of infections, caseload, burden on the health system, but also is a crucial factor for the rise in the number of multi-drug resistant infections and even compromises the safety and dignity of the patients [1][2][3] . There are no second thoughts that a child born in a health facility with poor WASH standards is at immense risk of acquiring the Infection & death, and the same applies to the mother as well 2,3 .…”

“…The first and foremost step is to perform a situation analysis (pertaining to existing policies, financial support, etc.) & assessment about the coverage of WASH services and this information can be utilized for mobilization of resources and prioritization [2][3][4] . This has to be followed by the setting-up of the feasible targets and laying out of the roadmap, which should contain explicit information about the roles & responsibilities of the involved stakeholders and the budgetary provisions 3,5 .…”

“…& assessment about the coverage of WASH services and this information can be utilized for mobilization of resources and prioritization [2][3][4] . This has to be followed by the setting-up of the feasible targets and laying out of the roadmap, which should contain explicit information about the roles & responsibilities of the involved stakeholders and the budgetary provisions 3,5 . Subsequently, national standards and accountability mechanisms have to be framed and this has to be done simultaneously with the improvement of the existing infrastructure 2,3 .…”