Water, sanitation and hygiene

Imagine a world where every drop of water is cherished and where our actions today ensure a sustainable tomorrow. As a 20-year-old, I've been anxious about the future, especially regarding vital resources like water. The water crisis in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru hits close to home – it's not just a distant problem; it's right here,…

Shankar Bandi's childhood memories are not of carefree days but of witnessing his mother's daily struggle to fetch water. Growing up in Koppal, a district in southern Indian state of Karnataka facing water scarcity, Shankar was deeply impacted by the hardships his family and community suffered. He vividly remembers the burden his mother carried,…

Meet Munni, Deepti, Urmila, Laxmi and Manisha. The inspiring Jal Bahinis  from Masora Village in Chhattisgarh.  Jal Bahini are  water warriors who take up a leadership role for the governance of drinking water services in villages. To accelerate change at the community level, Public Health Engineering Department, Chhattisgarh, in collaboration…, Major five functions for Jal Bahinis:,  Effective participation of community in planning and implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission through community mobilization.  Interpersonal communication for water tariff collection,    Opening and maintaining capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) account including operation and maintenance (O&M) for revenue and…, Impact on community, The community’s happiness has been evident and overwhelming joy could be seen on the villagers’ face after getting potable tap connections in their houses. After hundreds of years of drudgery of fetching water, they understood that the basic luxury of getting water on demand is a gateway to all the other empowering lifelines like a healthy family…, UNICEF and Jal Jeevan Mission, Access to clean drinking water is the right of every child.  UNICEF continues to work with the Government of India to ensure clean drinking water reaches the most vulnerable communities and children in India.  Currently, Chhattisgarh has provided 2.8 million (57 percent) households with tap water connections in Chhattisgarh since the launch of the…

GIRDIDH, India: Priya Kumari is in the 8th grade at UMS Arkhango in Giridih district in the central Indian state of Jharkhand. Priya is one of the million girls worldwide who menstruate every month. She had no idea what was happening when she reached her menarche. She rushed to her school's nodal teacher, who counselled and handed her a pad. It…

The UNICEF Assam Field Office (AFO) supports 203 Tea Estates in eight districts of Assam under the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETA) programme. The lack of safe and adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services provides significant issues to the tea tribes' communities. The report's key objective is to assess the functionality of WASH…

The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), the national flagship programme of the Government of India (building on the National Rural Drinking Water Programme – NRDWP) envisions safe and adequate drinking water for all, always, in rural India.  It aims to ensure that by 2022, at least 90 per cent of rural households are provided with piped water supply; at…

To improve sanitation facilities nationwide, the Government of India (GoI) launched the flagship sanitation campaign, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), in 2014. The campaign's first phase concluded in 2019, with all Indian villages, states and union territories declaring themselves "open-defecation free" (ODF). Further, the Government of India has…

The importance of WinS for education is acknowledged by even the Right to Education Act, which mandates basic WASH facilities in schools. Successive governments have invested in WinS through various programmes since early 1990s and development organizations such as UNICEF have been supporting such government efforts for decades.    Since 2014,…

Hand hygiene, particularly, handwashing with soap, is recognized as a highly cost-effective public health intervention, which has the potential to reduce disease burden globally significantly. Handwashing with soap at five critical times- after defecation, after handling a child’s faeces, before feeding infants/children, before eating and before…

This study was conducted as a weekly surveillance of wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 to gather evidence about the COVID-19 situation at the community level. The surveillance study was carried out in the Ahmedabad city of Gujarat state in India.   Given that up to 67 per cent of infected people showed SARS-CoV2 presence in faeces, alternative approaches…

COVID-19 impacted countries across the globe to varying degrees. In India, the pandemic led to the government imposing a nationwide lockdown starting on 24 March 2020, during which almost all activities came to a standstill for the subsequent months. During the pandemic, it became very clear early on that COVID-19 was not just a health crisis that…

UNICEF in India accords high priority to the provision of safe sanitation and water services to people in rural areas and has over the past many years aided through catalytic technical support to the Government of India and 15 state governments in the implementation of the various sanitation programmes and since 2014, specifically to the Swachh…