Water, sanitation and hygiene
Ensuring adequate access to water and sanitation for every child
- Available in:
- English
- Portuguese
Challenges
Guinea-Bissau has made large strides in water and sanitation since 2000. According to MICS 5, 75 per cent of the country’s total population have access to improved drinking water source. However, lack of reliable data about water points availability and functionality led UNICEF to support the ministry to establish a cloudbased borehole database, fed by input from smartphones. The country wide assessment undertaken showed that approximately 50 per cent of existing hand pumps are actually not functional due to the lack of technicians or pump spares availability. This study also showed that 65 per cent of protected open wells are contaminated by faecal coliforms and water is unsafe for human consumption.
Although the government is involved in several global commitments to improve WASH and pledges to dedicate state budget funding to sanitation, no allocations for sanitation improvement has been done and the WASH funding reduction from both the government as well as international donors has had severe impact on available funds for WASH programming in country.
Solutions
UNICEF WASH STRATEGY
UNICEF aims to enhance WASH sector in Guinea-Bissau, amongst others, by:
- Developing a competitive and professionally functioning private-sector driven market for hand pump spare parts and repairs as well as promoting sanitation marketing;
- Providing leadership in evidence generation, knowledge gathering, mapping and information sharing, as global WASH cluster lead for creation of national policies.
- Support the government to maintain a functional and up-to-date national data base of water points and ODF status through innovative tools;
- Support WASH in schools, in health centres and reinforce the links with nutrition;
Resources
In 2018, UNICEF continued the functionality mapping of waterpoints commenced in 2016, using mWATER application on smartphones, to up-to-date visualization of waterpoint functionality. Nearly 5 250 waterpoints were visited, out of which a 25,6 per cent are boreholes equipped with pumps.
As an additional measure to waterpoint mapping, a new behaviour change approach to increase awareness of the links between water quality and illness was piloted by UNICEF through the introduction of water safety planning. The Guinea-Bissau developed methodology is utilizing the CLTS modality to achieve similar modification of behaviour, but adapted to water. The communities will be triggered to repair their broken handpump or engage in household water treatment, triggered by the result of the E Coli water test.
ODF free villages
UNICEF efforts to scale-up community-led-total-sanitation achieved major progress. During 2016-2018 a total of 611 communities of the country’s more than 4 000 villages were certified ODF which is vastly superior to the planned annual target. The rapid increase in the number of villages verified as ODF during the last two years, puts Guinea-Bissau on track to meet the 2030 sanitation goals. During 2018 Quinara was declared the first ODF region. ODF is part of the key results for children goals, a regional initiative to ensure results in key programmatic areas.
WASH in schools
Furthermore, WASH in schools systems improved with the attachment introduction of innovative latrine designs in 20 schools in Bafatá and Oio, which were accompanied by the introduction of the Three-star approach for school sanitation, with special attention to menstrual hygiene management in 30 schools.
WASH in Health Centers and maternity wards
With regards to WASH in health centers, major work was undertaken to improve access of health facilities with both WASH and solar electricity. To date, 64 of the 109 health centres have been completed, introducing solar power for electricity and solar powered pumps. This major rehabilitation has resulted in a dramatic increase in percentage of access to water in rural health centres from 37 per cent in 2016 to 77 per cent. Likewise, access to electricity in centres rose from 49 per cent to 81 per cent. An additional 14 health centres and hospitals with maternity wards are being rehabilitated through the UNICEF funded Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) project.