WASHplus Weekly – focus on water kiosks

August 26, 2011 · 0 comments

Issue 22 August 26, 2011 | Focus on Water Kiosks
This WASHplus Weekly contains reports on water kiosks experiences in Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi and Tanzania. Water kiosks are booths for the sale of tap water. Kiosks can be operated by employees of utilities, by self-employed operators under contract with utilities or water committees consisting of volunteers. Involving communities in deciding about the location of kiosks, their opening hours and the choice of the kiosk operators increases the likelihood of kiosks being accepted and functioning well. In addition to reports, there are also links to videos and recent newspaper articles on water kiosks.
REPORTS/WIKIS
  • Business Models for Delegated Management of Local Water Services: Experience from Naivasha, Kenya, 2011. Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). Link to report
    This brief describes a business model for delegated management of local water services, recently developed with WSUP support in the Kenyan Rift Valley town of Naivasha. This business model is designed to ensure affordable but high-quality services for consumers, profitability for the operators, and sufficient revenues for sustainable asset maintenance.
  • A Focus on Sustainable Finance: Small Water Kiosks, 2011. Safe Water Network. Link to report
    The Safe Water Network (SWN) manages more than 15 safe water kiosks providing over 100,000 people with access to safe, affordable water on a daily basis. They expect to have 25 kiosks in place by the end of 2011.  The sites are located, sized and constructed in a diverse range of settings and geographies to establish a learning platform that enables SWN to validate models that address challenges to sustainability.
  • Managing Communal Water Kiosks in Malawi: Experiences in Water Supply Management in Poor Urban Settlements in Lilongwe, n.d. WaterAid. Link to report
    If a public/private water utility is going to be efficient and effective in providing water to the urban poor, it must have a dedicated unit to address issues that often go unattended by the utility company, especially the revenue collection and projects departments. Since the establishment of the Kiosk Management Unit, the Lilongwe Water Board has been able to improve its revenue collection and more importantly its understanding of challenges in providing water to low income areas.
  • Small-scale Water Providers in Kenya: Pioneers or Predators, 2011. United Nations Development Program. Link to report
    From a policy viewpoint, piped water connections on premises remain the most affordable and safe system of water provision. In the meantime, supporting fixed-point water suppliers such as public taps and water kiosks represents a second-best solution. Strengthening capacity within regulatory institutions is required to ensure affordability and quality of the water provided.
  • Water Kiosks Wiki. Link to wiki
    This wiki provides a brief description of water kiosks in several countries and links to studies and evaluations.
  • Water Prices in Dar es Salaam: Do Water Kiosks Comply with Official Tariffs? 2010. UWAZI. Link to report
    This brief discusses prices charged for water at a randomly selected sample of 25 water kiosks in Dar es Salaam. Findings reveal that the official tariff of 20 shillings per 20 liter set by EWURA is not followed. None of the visited kiosks charged this price and many charged seven times or even ten times as much.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Water Will Be Lifeblood of Smart Urban Expansion

August 17, 2011 · 0 comments

U.N. Bureau Chief Thalif Deen interviews ANDERS BERNTELL, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17, 2011 (IPS) – The world’s water map is being significantly redrawn due primarily to the mass migration of people into urban centres, threatening one of life’s vital resources.

By 2050, the world’s urban population is estimated to be of the same size as the total global population today: a staggering six billion plus.

“The problem is not that cities are growing, the challenge most often is where they are growing,” Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told IPS.

A majority of people migrating to and being born in cities are in regions that already are experiencing water stress, and 95 percent of urban expansion will occur in developing countries, he predicted.

Berntell, who will be presiding over the 21st annual World Water Week in the Swedish capital beginning next week, pointed out that in less than 20 years, African and Asian cities will host twice as many people as they did at the turn of the century.

The theme of this year’s conference will be: “Responding to Global Changes: Water in an Urbanising World“.

In an interview with IPS, Berntell said the traditional approach, to dig deeper and pump farther to meet increasing demand for water, will not work for most places – rather, “it will lead to devastated ecosystems and eventually, depressed economies that need water to function.”

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How severe will be the impact of rapid urbanisation on water supplies in the next decade?

A: Perhaps the more important question to address is how water will impact urban growth over the next decade and that will depend on the choices that cities make today. Cities in dry regions that plan for their immediate, mid- and long-term futures can avoid potential disasters and near certain economic disruption from shortages of water.

They can choose smarter paths where they are prepared for droughts and floods and avoid losses when they come. They can opt to generate net gains from moving, cleaning and reusing water throughout the city instead of sending pollution through the drain.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Neighborhood urban environmental quality conditions are likely to drive malaria and diarrhea mortality

August 12, 2011 · 0 comments

J Environ Public Health. 2011;2011:484010.

Neighborhood urban environmental quality conditions are likely to drive malaria and diarrhea mortality in Accra, Ghana.

Fobil JN, Kraemer A, Meyer CG, May J. Infectious Disease Epidemiology Group, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical
Medicine, Bernhard Nocht Str. 74, 20359 Hamburg, Germany.

Background. Urbanization is a process which alters the structure and function of urban environments. The alteration in the quality of urban environmental conditions has significant implications for health. This applies both to the ecology of insect vectors that may transmit diseases and the burden of disease.

Study Objectives. To investigate the relationship between malaria and infectious diarrhea mortality and spatially varied neighborhood environmental quality conditions in a low-income economy.

Design. A one time point spatial analysis of cluster-level environmental conditions and mortality data using principal
component analysis (PCA), one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and generalized linear models (GLMs). Methods. Environmental variables were extracted from the Ghana Census 2000 database while mortality data were obtained from the Ghana Births and Deaths Registry in Accra over the period 1998-2002.

Results. Whereas there was a strong evidence of a difference in relative mortality of malaria across urban environmental zones of differing neighborhood environmental conditions, no such evidence of mortality differentials was observed for
diarrhea. In addition, whereas bivariate analyses showed a weak to strong evidence of association between the environmental variables and malaria mortality, no evidence of association was found between diarrhea mortality and
environmental variables.

Conclusion. We conclude that environmental management initiatives intended for infectious disease control might substantially reduce the risk of urban malaria mortality and to a less extent that for urban diarrhea mortality in rapidly urbanizing areas in a low-income setting.

Drinking Water Quality, Feeding Practices, and Diarrhea among Children

August 11, 2011 · 0 comments

Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2011 Aug;85(2):318-26.

Drinking Water Quality, Feeding Practices, and Diarrhea among Children under 2 Years of HIV-Positive Mothers in Peri-Urban Zambia.

Peletz R, Simuyandi M, Sarenje K, Baisley K, Kelly P, Filteau S, Clasen T. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom; Tropical Gastroenterology and Nutrition Group, University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka,
Zambia; Barts and The London School of Medicine, Queen Mary, University of London, London, United Kingdom.

In low-income settings, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive mothers must choose between breastfeeding their infants and risking transmission of HIV or replacement feeding their infants and risking diarrheal disease from contaminated water. We conducted a cross-sectional study of children < 2 years of age of 254 HIV-positive mothers in peri-urban Zambia to assess their exposure to waterborne fecal contamination. Fecal indicators were found in 70% of household drinking water samples.

In a multivariable analysis, factors associated with diarrhea prevalence in children < 2 years were mother having diarrhea (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 5.18, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.65-16.28), child given water in the past 2 days (aOR = 4.08, 95% CI = 1.07-15.52), child never being breastfed (aOR = 2.67, 95% CI = 1.06-6.72), and rainy (versus dry) season (aOR = 4.60, 95% CI = 1.29-16.42). Children born to HIV-positive mothers were exposed to contaminated water through direct intake of drinking water, indicating the need for interventions to ensure microbiological water quality.

Cost of boiling drinking water in urban Zambia

August 11, 2011 · 0 comments

Environ Sci Technol. 2011 Jul 15;45(14):6095-101.

Assessing the microbiological performance and potential cost of boiling drinking water in urban Zambia.

Psutka R, Peletz R, Michelo S, Kelly P, Clasen T. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel St., London WC1E 7H, United Kingdom.

Boiling is the most common method of disinfecting water in the home and the benchmark against which other point-of-use water treatment is measured. In a six-week study in peri-urban Zambia, we assessed the microbiological effectiveness and potential cost of boiling among 49 households without a water connection who reported “always” or “almost always” boiling their water before drinking it. Source and household drinking water samples were compared weekly for thermotolerant coliforms (TTC), an indicator of fecal contamination.

[click to continue…]

Bookmark and Share

Do migrant children face greater health hazards in slum settlements?

August 11, 2011 · 0 comments

J Urban Health. 2011 Jun;88 Suppl 2:266-81.

Do migrant children face greater health hazards in slum settlements? Evidence from Nairobi, Kenya.Bocquier P, Beguy D, Zulu EM, Muindi K, Konseiga A, Yé Y.Department of Demography and Population Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, philippe.bocquier@gmail.com.

Between 60% and 70% of Nairobi City’s population live in congested informal settlements, commonly referred to as slums, without proper access to sanitation, clean water, health care and other social services. Children in such areas are exposed to disproportionately high health hazards. This paper examines the impact of mother and child migration on the survival of more than 10,000 children in two of Nairobi’s informal settlements-Korogocho and Viwandani-between July 2003 and June 2007, using a two-stage semi-parametric proportional hazards (Cox) model that controls for attrition and various factors that affect child survival.

Results show that the slum-born have higher mortality than non-slum-born, an indication that delivery in the slums has long-term health consequences for children. Children born in the slums to women who were pregnant at the time of migration have the highest risk of dying. Given the high degree of circular migration, factors predisposing children born in the slums to recent migrant mothers to higher mortality should be better understood and addressed.

Social and Climate Vulnerability in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

July 28, 2011 · 0 comments

Tomorrow is too Late: Responding to Social and Climate Vulnerability in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2011.

David Dodman, Euster Kibona and Linda Kiluma Case study prepared for Cities and Climate Change: Global Report on Human Settlements 2011.

Full-text: http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/GRHS2011/GRHS2011CaseStudyChapter06DaresSalaam.pdf

Seventy percent of the population of Dar es Salaam lives in unplanned settlements; and fifty percent of the residents of these informal settlements live on an average income of less than US$1/day (Ndezi, 2009). This fact is an important starting point for discussing the city’s vulnerability to climate change, and the strategies for adapting to this.

Why is urban health so poor even in many successful cities?

July 28, 2011 · 0 comments

Environment and Urbanization, 2011

Editorial: Why is urban health so poor even in many successful cities?

Full-text: http://www.environmentandurbanization.org/documents/EAU231Editorialpp.5-12.pdf

David Satterthwaite, IIED.

Urban health issues still do not get the attention they deserve in discussions of development or environment. Successful “development” is so intimately related to health – to measures that directly or indirectly help individuals, households or communities avoid or prevent disease, injury and inadequate food intake. Beyond an absence of disease or injury, “development” means the achievement of living and working conditions that underpin well-being. Environmental management is also intimately related to health, again in these two senses, either preventing or minimizing airborne, food-borne or water-related diseases and the effects of chemical pollutants and physical hazards, and ensuring good living and working environments that can contribute to well-being.

Social determinants of health for the world’s poorest countries

July 28, 2011 · 0 comments

African Health Sciences 2011

Are there particular social determinants of health for the world’s poorest countries?

Full-text: http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ahs/article/viewFile/65005/52718

Eshetu EB

Background: The task of improving Social and Economic Determinants of Health (SEDH) imposes a significant challenge
to health policy makers in both rich and poor countries. In recent years, while there has been increasing research interest and evidence on the workings of SEDHs, the vast majority of studies on this issue are from developed countries and emphasizes specific concerns of the developed nations of the world. Importantly, they may not fully explain the underlying causal factors and pathways of health inequality in the world’s poorest countries.

Objective: To explore whether there are specific social determinants of health in the world’s poorest countries, and if so,
how they could be better identified and researched in Africa in order to promote and support the effort that is currently being made for realizing a better health for all.

Methods: Extensive literature review of existing papers on the social and economic determinants of health.

Conclusion: Most of the existing studies on the social and economic determinants of health studies may not well provide
adequate explanation on the historical and contemporary realties of SEDHs in the world’s poorest countries. As these
factors vary from one country to another, it becomes necessary to understand country-specific conditions and design
appropriate policies that take due cognisance of these country-specific circumstances. Therefore, to support the global effort to close gaps in health disparities, further research is needed in the world’s poorest countries, especially on African social determinants of health.

India – Study on health of the urban poor

July 27, 2011 · 0 comments

July 11, 2011 – Making healthcare affordable and accessible to the urban poor continues to be a major challenge in India. To address this problem, the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in Mumbai, in collaboration with other agencies, has initiated a study on the “health of the urban poor”.

Further, while the Centre had proposed a National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), which may be modelled on the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the findings of the IIPS study will act as major inputs for the mission. The IIPS project, which involves organisations like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Population Foundation of India among others, will focus on eight states including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

“The study is significant because even for the simplest things in healthcare, the cost in the private sector is very high. The urban poor and homeless cannot afford it. With so much migration to urban areas, lack of affordable healthcare for the urban poor is a serious issue and it’s high time that we provided solutions for it,” said Prof F Ram, IIPS director. “Further, the Centre is planning to introduce the NUHM and work on formulating it is currently on. Our recommendations will act as inputs for the policy,” he said. As part of the project, capacity building and training of medical officers has already been initiated by IIPS in some states.

Source

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →