Prioritising good sanitation and hygiene in the aftermath of landslides
10,000 people from four municipalities to benefit from hygiene kits
Dili, 15 July 2025 - The village of Lemorana is anchored at the foot of gently sloping hills, on the outskirts of the capital city, Dili. For 30 years, Ana dos Santos has raised her family here, living in harmony with the hills, whose springs have provided them with water, and whose trees have been a source of a variety of wild fruits.
Little did Ana know that one day she would watch haplessly as an avalanche of mud, rocks, and uprooted trees surge towards their village, leaving their modest houses trapped beneath a thick layer of earth and debris.
Across Timor-Leste 30,367 households met a smiliar fate to that of Ana and her family, and had to be evacuated to temporary shelters.
“It had been raining heavily for more than six days. Our biggest worry at that time was that the rivers had become flooded, and the children could no longer go to school,” says Ana, who never imagined that the once beautiful landscape surrounding Lemorana would torment their lives.
Timor-Leste is at high risk of natural hazards, including floods and landslides, events which often result in multiple overlapping shocks, stresses and hazards affecting children and their families. The April 2021 floods and landslides were among the worst that the country has experienced in decades, forcing already marginalised communities to face additional burdens of losing their homes,and now living in communities were public infrastructure, including water and sanitation systems were damaged.
After spending more than a month in a shelter, Ana and her family returned to Lemorana, to rebuild their lives. While it did not take long to put up makeshift walls and roofs to make up their new house, Ana’s biggest despair was the realisation that the landslide destroyed the village’s water and sanitation system, which was already fragile before the disaster.
“The toilets were buried, and open defecation became the only option for many. We had no access to drinking water as water pipes from the main reservoir were destroyed and water from the rivers and springs was brown and muddy. We had no choice but to use this dirty water for cooking, drinking and for cleaning the house.”
“At that time, I had very young children – my youngest daughter, Domingas, was only six years. Because of poor hygiene, the children suffered a lot from diarrhea, cough and fever,” says Ana, as she explains how the community lived in constant fear of disease outbreaks because of poor health and hygiene.
Ana is today happy that they continue to receive support to help restore good hygiene and sanitation practices within the village.
Working closely with the Ministry of Health, UNICEF, with funding from the People’s Republic of China, has reached 2 000 affected families from Dili, Ainaro, Baucau, and Ermera to help them rebuild the damage on water, sanitation and hygiene facilities across their communities, and to ensure that they are well prepared for future disasters.
Under this support, 25 water tanks, each with a capacity of 5 200litres, have been procured to ensure that there is a regular supply of clean and safe water reaching in affected communities. In addition, families have received hygiene kits, which contain sanitation and hygiene essential items such as disinfections, surface cleaning consumables, cleaning equipment and water purification tablets.
Ana explains that an important component of the support they have received is the information and skills to help people understand why hygiene matters, and how they can adopt and sustain basic hygiene practices in the home.
“The water from the community tanks reaches the homes two times a week, which means we must store the water in huge containers. We have been taught on how to keep this stored water clean by making sure it is covered and to boil the drinking water,”
Like other mothers in Lemorana, Ana now ensures that every member of her household adopt basic practices such as washing hands after using the toilet, boiling and securely storing drinking water, and ensuring that household utensils are kept clean.
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