Poor success prompts authorities to renew sanitation campaign

Officials said the government has decided to designate October as national sanitation month to raise public awareness about water and sanitation-related diseases, which are blamed for deaths of nearly 350 people everyday across the country.

According to an international study, basic sanitation facilities reduce the water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, and scabies by up to 77 per cent.

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A joint meeting of the government, development partners and NGOs last week decided to replace 15,000 of the remaining hanging latrines of Dhaka city by hygienic ones by September this year as part of the renewed sanitation campaign.

Chaired by LGRD and Cooperatives Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, the meting also decided to remove the hanging latrines from all city corporation areas, district headquarters and municipalities within the period.

The meeting decided to immediately launch a countrywide baseline survey on the sanitary latrine situation.

The meeting was told that 1,700 hanging latrines were removed from different parts of Dhaka city in the past two months under the auspices of several NGOs.

According to a Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment study, 53 per cent of population came under sanitation coverage in 2000 against an earlier government goal to achieve 80 per cent coverage by that time.

The sanitation coverage in the country was 37 per cent in 1990.

Sri Lanka scores the highest position in terms of sanitation coverage in South Asia with 83 per cent population having access to sanitation facilities.

Bhutan follows Sri Lanka reaching the facility to 69 per cent.

In India, the total sanitation coverage in 2000 was 31 per cent, in Nepal 27 per cent and in Myanmar 46 per cent.

The officials said the status of rural sanitation coverage in Bangladesh was worse with only 10 per cent households having access to sanitary latrines. However, if the pit latrines are counted the coverage would be around 40 per cent.

An official of a development partner said although the water supply and sanitation campaign were supposed to go hand in hand under a single programme, the achievement in expansion of sanitation facilities was lagging far behind the water supply.

An NGO official blamed the failure on lack of motivation and procedural problems.

"It is apparent that safe water supply alone will not be enough to reduce water-borne diseases. Poor sanitation is the cause of present vulnerability to the diseases with hardcore poor being the worst victims," said Waled Mahmud, a sanitation expert working for a donor agency.

He added: "Only access to sanitary latrines and proper hygiene practices can change the existing situation."