Departments join forces for hygiene education

The strategy sets out a comprehensive approach to the delivery of sustainable and effective health and hygiene education in South Africa.

National Sanitation and Hygiene Week

Speaking at the unveiling ceremony Monday, Water Affairs Minister Lindiwe Hendricks said the strategy recognised the close relationship between the delivery of water and sanitation infrastructure, and the improved health of a community.

The event marks the beginning of National Sanitation and Hygiene Week, which runs annually from 21 to 31 March.

Informed by the strategy this year the week is observed under the theme "Sanitation for Health and Dignity".

“The strategy we are launching today stresses the need to move away from conventional delivery approaches and models to more vigorous approaches and best practice that will significantly increase service delivery.

“The plan is to provide this education within programmes for the delivery of water supply and sanitation services,” said Ms Hendricks.

She noted that South Africa was the first country in the world to observe this week last year.

“Our government recognises the importance of sanitation in improving the lives people and giving them dignity,” she said.

No sanitation for almost half the world

The purpose of National Sanitation Week is to highlight the work that the department is doing to ensure that all South Africans have access to sanitation.

She said the lack of sanitation was a pressing challenge in many other countries and more than 40% of world's population (approximately 2.4 billion people) still had no access to basic sanitation.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.8 million people die each year from diarrhoeal diseases, mostly related to poor sanitation and hygiene.

It further estimated that 5,500 children across the world die every day from diseases caused by contaminated food and water.

Eradicating the bucket system

An international movement to address the lack of sanitation, and the United Nations General Assembly in adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in year 2000 agreed to halve the global backlog in sanitation and water by the year 2015, said the minister.

To this end, government has set the targets to eradicate all the bucket systems in formal established settlements by December 2007.

“This means that all clinics and schools will have safe and adequate water and sanitation by December 2007 and all households will have access to basic sanitation by 2010,” she said.

In January this year, there were about 132,000 buckets being use in established areas across the country.

KwaZulu-Natal is one of the provinces that had few bucket toilets and have already eradicated their backlogs.

However, the province has 714, 000 households that needs to be provided with adequate sanitation services.

It has the second highest backlog in household sanitation, following Limpopo - the province with the highest backlog, which still has more than 810,000 households lacking adequate sanitation.

The Eastern Cape has the third highest backlog with more than 450,000 households lacking sanitation.

Ms Hendricks said the extensive support and efforts were directed at provinces such as the Free State, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape, where the bulk of the buckets existed.

“It is however very encouraging to see the commitment demonstrated by affected municipalities who have committed additional municipal funds, as well human resources to achieving this target,” she said.

According to Ms Hendricks, to meet the 2010 target for sanitation, KwaZulu-Natal has to increase the current delivery rate of around 50,000 structures per year to at least 180,000 structures per year.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews