Health

Content Courtesy: Solution Exchange and Nitya Jacob
Author: Nitya Jacob

India’s arteries are choking. Her rivers, the lifeline of hundreds of millions, are over-taxed, polluted and encroached. They are being mined, dammed and emptied of water. Save for the four monsoon months, most rivers are streams of drains, depending on how many cities they pass through. This year people gaped in awe at the River Yamuna (I am sure they were over-awed by other rivers elsewhere too) as for the first time since 1978 looked like a river and not a drain.

This paper discusses how to go about designing an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research project or programme, with ZEF’s research initiative on ‘water pollution and human health’ in India as the background of the presentation. A summary is given of Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn’s main arguments regarding ‘design principles’ for inter- and transdisciplinary research, and the basic tools they have developed for this are discussed in the context of ZEF’s ‘water pollution and human health’ research initiative.

We often get asked about toilets— what is the difference between a VIP and an improved pit latrine? What is the actual technology that supports Ecological Sanitation? Good questions, and so we are introducing short videos on different types of toilets.

This country-level report on the assessment of drinking water supply and sanitation in India is the result of a collaborative exercise between the Planning Commission of India, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the

Manual scavenging is the most obnoxious and inhuman practice violating the dignity and human personhood of safai karmacharis. It involves the engagement or employment of sections of people to manually dispose human excreta from dry latrines with bare minimum aids such as scrappers, brooms and baskets.

Manual scavenging is integrally linked with caste system and is imposed on certain dalit sub-caste groups particularly on their women. As a result all persons engaged in manual scavenging are dalits, and of them 82% are women.

From Ludhiana: Bassi Pathana Town - Fathegar sagar district:

A Community meeting was held in Valmiki Mohalla. It was attended by local eminent persons from the community, Mr. Sardar Sukhdev Singh Jamagal - rtrd Additional Judge, Mr. Kaval Jit Singh Mattu, Advocate, Mr. Dholak Ram - and President,  Safai karmachari Union, and community leader Mr. Ram ji Lal, Govt Employee. 12 liberated SK women took the responsibility of organising a meeting in the basti with the support of committee people. They invited the community as well as general public to the meeting, where the mission, demands, SKA’s back ground were discussed and people’s views were taken.

Sanitation - a big problem in India, as half the population of our country do not have access to this facility. Mumbai is one of the biggest cities in the world and advanced in terms of its commercialization. However, sanitation is one of the most common issues neglected. Our team of women from Jan Jagruti went into the lanes of 3 areas Azad Mohala, Bharatiya Kamla Nagar, Vijay Nagar and spoke to women to understand the severity of the sanitation issue prevailing. These areas have severe problems with public health, due to improper sanitation infrastructure and insufficiency of toilet facilities, compounded by numerous issues of flooding during the monsoon season. Khaaddi, a local area/dumping ground, is widely used by local residents for urination and defecation, leading to the spread of contagious diseases. Though women use paid toilets, the issue of cleanliness and waiting in long queues are the most common problem before them. It is very insecure for them when they use open spaces for defecation.

This presentation by ACWADAM deals with hydrogeology and sanitation guidelines. Safe water supply and sanitation choices are an important public health measure and source quality improvement is critical to this. The impact of different aspects of water and sanitation appears to be largely dependent on the conditions within a particular community and existing access to other components of water and sanitation.

This manual has been developed by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO), a department under the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and  serves as a standard guide in public health engineering by providing a code of day to day practice for public health engineers to follow.

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to visit a couple of partners in Tamil Nadu. These two partners are facing a difficult task—sanitation and hygiene implementation through community participation. One project is in the urban slums of Trichy while the other one is a rural project a few hours outside of Trichy. These communities have open defecation rates of 90%. The problem mostly lies on the women. Women feel embarrassed and ashamed to go out in the open, so as a result they only go in the early mornings or late at night—basically during pitch black. Menstrual Health is a topic that is only now being addressed with organizations developing their own branch of sanitary napkin production, sold cheaply to women in rural areas. In addition to the burden on women, open defecation pollutes water sources, thereby leading to diarrhea, one of the biggest killers of children in the developing world.