The importance
of health in general and water, sanitation and hygiene practice in particular
is indisputable. Water, sanitation and hygiene practice offers us the
opportunity to save the lives of 1.5 million children a year who would
otherwise succumb to diarrhoeal diseases, and to protect the health of many
more[1].
Much of the ill health in developing country like Bangladesh is due to poor
environmental sanitation, unsafe water and unhygienic disposal of human excreta
and refuse. Given the situation, knowledge on public health is essential for
the community members and demanding a greater role in decision making process
that impact their health and well-being. Health is multidimensional, and each
dimension is influenced by number of factors. Therefore, understanding of
health as a whole is beyond the scope of study. However, it has been framed in
terms of communicable diseases, maternal and neonatal mortality, etc.
The availability
of water (both quantity and quality) for use in and around the homestead is a
fundamental need for all. Water is used directly in the households, for
drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes, cleaning the house and utensils.
Poor quality or availability affects the health and workload of the poor. The
distribution of the households by main source of drinking water indicates a
large number of microfinance and non-microfinance households use tubewell (around
88%) and shallow or deep tubewell (around 12%) as sources of drinking water (Appendix
I, table 10.1). The survey has also
shown that while around eighty-eight percent of the households use tubewell as
the main source of drinking water, little over 84% households actually own
their own tubewell (Appendix I, table 10.2). The remaining 4% use the tubewell of
others. Apart from drinking water,
tubewell and STW/DTW are the sources of water for domestic use, such as washing
of utensils, for 88.415 and 1.43% of the total households, respectively (Appendix
I, table 10.3).
According to
2005 National Sanitation Strategy of Bangladesh, latrines are categorized as
‘hygienic’ and ‘unhygienic’. A ‘hygienic latrine’ is defined as a sanitation
facility, the use of which effectively breaks the cycle of disease
transmission. According to the respondents, the most frequently (64%) [A NGO
Strategic Plan indicator 6.2] used latrines are hygienic latrines –
60.93% of households use ring slab types of latrines and 2.81% use septic tank
types of latrines. Ultra poor households are in a worse of position compared to
poor households in the use of hygienic latrines (Appendix I, table 10.4).
Findings also reveal
that nearly 37% of the households use unhygienic (open and pit/kancha) type of
latrines for defecation. This has been supported by the fact that an
overwhelming proportion (37%) has reported the practice of open defecation in
the respective localities has not been eliminated (Appendix I, table 10.5). It
should be noted that presence of any extent of open defecation remains a threat
to public health of spreading large number of potentially death causing
diseases through water and air borne vectors.
[1] Progress
on drinking water and sanitation: special focus on sanitation. UNICEF, New York and WHO Geneva,
2008