Appendix C
Focus group discussion
· If you won HT$ 5,000 (note: US$ 625), what would you
do with it?
- Dig in to know their aspirations: if housing is mentioned, ask
what is wrong with your current house? why is having a nice house important?
· We have done a survey and found that you are
dissatisfied with excreta disposal.
You say money and space are your biggest problems:
- What is the cost of a new latrine?
- What cost would it have to have to be not a problem?
- We have engineers working on this, we need to give them a cost
to design to. What should it be?
· Space: If we designed a latrine which takes 1 x 1m,
would you find space for it?
Participants in the discussion: Mmes Bertha Michel, Evelyne
Duvercin, Iniose Planor, Janine Pierre, Jasmine Laguerre, Jasmine Zulma,
Liliane Paul, Mulène Timète, Philia Alcyanas Jean (all members of
Fanm pa chita) and M. Philoclès Marcelin.
Appendix D
Sustainable excreta disposal
by Steven Sugden, included in the joint report; from Jenkins
& Sugden (2006) Sustainable excreta disposal can be said to have been
achieved when:
1. latrines are being consistently used by all members of the
family,
2. the community / society is maintaining latrine coverage at
100% without external support,
3. there is no significant risk to community health from
disposal techniques,
4. there is no significant degradation of the environment,
5. it can be maintained over a prolonged period i.e. 20
years.
Consistent use: To have an impact on public
health, latrines have to be used at all times by all members of the family.
This is in fact more difficult to achieve than it may at first appear. Children
are often scared of the monsters their brothers have told them live in the dark
pit latrines; latrines can harbour snakes making use dan- gerous in the dark;
and latrines sited a distance from the house are inconvenient, particularly
when it is dark and open defecation nearer home is an easier option. Communal
latrines which are locked at night, or unused because of fear of attack,
do not allow for consistent use either, and are often not
designed for children's use.
Maintaining coverage at 100% without external support:
Villages and commu- nities grow, either by increasing the area they
occupy or their density. Populations can double in size within 10 years and a
project achieving 100% latrine coverage
in 1995 may only have 50% coverage in 2005. Any system
developed for build- ing latrines needs be able to continue building and
repairing them after external funded has ended and has to ensure that community
members do not become dependent on subsides or outside organisation to achieve
this.
No significant risk to community health from disposal
techniques: The de- sired health impacts of latrine use are quickly
lost if using the latrine results in
Rémi Kaupp D. Sustainable excreta disposal
pathogens entering into the community. This may occur from
faecal contami-
nates entering into the water supply via the ground water or in a
high density urban setting, by not using a pit emptying service and letting the
pit contents flow
to the street, a surface drain, or their neighbours'
compounds.
No significant degradation of the environment:
There is also a growing con- cern about the impact latrine building
has on the environment. Designs requiring the use of local bricks needing
firewood to make will have an environmental im- pact. Traditional latrines can
have a local adaptation of using slow growing hard woods, such as mahogany, to
support the platform. This has become necessary as the local softwood suffers
from termite attack causing latrine collapse, but hard- wood supplies in many
areas are rapidly dwindling and latrine building can add
to the depletion problem.
Can be maintained over a prolonged period i.e. 20
years: Behaviour change, latrine building and demand creation are
slow processes that take time and other resources to stimulate. Any delivery
system developed has to meet the needs of households who are slow to adopt
latrine usage and change their behaviour. The slowest tend to be the poorest,
least educated and most risk averse members of the community. The delivery
system itself must be financially sustainable, be locally available and meet
evolving needs over time.
There has been debate within the sector about widening the
definition of sustainable sanitation to include the principle that waste should
be considered a resource and that sustainable sanitation is only achieved when
the nutrients in waste are returned to the land. It is argued that the western
style of waste treatment, where the nutrients eventu- ally end up as pollution
in the world's rivers and oceans, is globally unsustainable. This has resulted
in the promotion of ecological sanitation which is based on composting hu- man
waste and using it as fertiliser. This is a persuasive argument in the right
context. If
a community is predominantly agriculture based, soil fertility is
declining and the cost
of artificial fertiliser is increasing, the adoption of
ecological sanitation is rational and can have a large impact on the household
economy.
Achieving these five criteria is not an easy process and cannot
be done by using
a one-off, technically-led, supply-driven, hardware-based
approach. It requires long term commitment and sustained management from the
public bodies responsible for public health, but public bodies can not do this
alone; effective partnerships with the private sector latrine builders /
service providers are needed. Just as curative health is not considered to
have been improved by the provision of a hospital; excreta disposal and the
associated public health benefits cannot be considered to have been achieved
with the simple provision of latrines.
Rémi Kaupp
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