1.2 WASH in urban areas

This section outlines the challenges of WASH service delivery in an urban context.

The term WASH services includes supply and distribution of clean water, promotion and implementation of environmental sanitation, and promotion of safe hygiene practices to communities. Sanitation includes provision of latrines and other methods to protect health by preventing human contact with wastes. All three components – water, sanitation and hygiene – are important to ensure healthy community life. These services are also interdependent. For instance, handwashing with soap after visiting latrines is a safe hygiene practice. However, communities can only do this if clean water is available. Even when communities have an adequate supply of water, the lack of latrines can lead to open defecation and pose threats to health (see Figure 1.3). Contamination of water and the wider environment is the source of many diseases caused by micro-organisms found in faeces.

Figure 1.3 A slum area of an Ethiopian town showing faeces in the drainage channel.

WASH services should ideally be provided for the whole urban area at all times. Lack of services in one small area can lead to significant risk of contamination of water or food. A disease outbreak in a poorly serviced area of town can quickly spread to better serviced areas. Lack of WASH services therefore directly affects the health and well-being of whole communities. If not tackled, this will diminish Ethiopia’s capacity to progress towards its goals for economic development. WASH services are issues of basic human rights and dignity, and reflect politically on local and national government.

The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), led by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), monitors the progress in water supply and sanitation services worldwide. The 2012 Ethiopia data shows that in urban areas access to improved water supply and improved latrines is 97% and 69% respectively. In a town of 150,000 people, this indicates that 31% (or 46,500 people) lack access to improved sanitation facilities, and 3% (or 4,500 people) lack water from improved sources (JMP, 2014).

Much more needs to be done to provide urban communities with WASH services of sufficient quality and quantity. The government of Ethiopia, with support from international and local organisations, plans and implements interventions in urban areas to expand existing systems or invest in new infrastructure. (An intervention is any action intended to improve a situation.) For example, Ethiopia set out to achieve 98% access to water in urban areas by the year 2015 as part of its Growth and Transformation Plan I (2010–15) and significant progress has been made. However, improving WASH services to the desired level of coverage continues to be extremely challenging.