What are the benefits of safe water supply and sanitation?

What are the expected outcomes of meeting the MDG 7 Target 10? In the context of development challenges, it is a great priority to focus on water supply and sanitation. Indeed, it is an imperative to respect human values, it provides good health and ensures economic benefits.

Respecting human values

Expanding access to water and sanitation is a moral and ethical imperative rooted in the cultural and religious traditions of communities around the world. Dignity, equity, compassion and solidarity are values shared all over the world. Extending water supply and sanitation services to poor households would largly contribute to promoting them. The Right to Water, recently proclaimed by the United Nations, (General Comment No 15, 2002), is said to be "indispensable for leading a life in human dignity" and "a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights."

Improving the health of the community.

Safe drinking water and basic sanitation is of crucial importance to the preservation of human health, especially among children. Water-related diseases are the most common cause of illness and death among the poor of developing countries. According to the World Health Organization, 1.6 million deaths of children per year can be attributed to unsafe water, poor sanitation, and lack of hygiene. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program evaluated that meeting the MDG Target 10 would avert 470 000 deaths per year.

Generating economic benefits

An analysis by the WHO found that achiving the MDG number 7 would bring substantial economic gains: each $1 invested would yield an economic return of between $3 and $34, depending on the region. Households with improved services suffer less morbidity and mortality from waterrelated diseases. The benefits would include an average global reduction of 10 % in diarrheal episodes. Health-related costs avoided would reach $7.3 billion per year and the annual global value of adult working days gained because of less illness would rise to almost $750 million. Better services resulting from the relocation of a well or borehole to a site closer to user communities, the installation of piped water supply in houses, and latrines closer to home yield significant time savings.

Girls and women have better educational and productive opportunities when they have water and sanitation facilities nearby, because they can safeguard their privacy in school and save time fetching water. The availability of water can be used to start or expand small enterprises and thus increase disposable household income. At the national level, demand for agricultural products increased, and tourism may develop.

The benefits of such services will vary across regions. The worse unserved and the more touched by disease the region, the greater the benefits from improved services.

Improving life at all ages

From the age of 0 to 4 years, the cruel toll of child mortality may be reduced. From the age of 5 to 14 years, far more children, especially girls, could go to school if they had adequate drinking water and sanitation facilities. It would enable children to escape from their families'poverty. From the age of 15 to 59 years, productivity gains would be achieved with improved water and sanitation facilities. People older than 60 could expect to live longer.

Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation

At the end of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990), WHO and UNICEF established a Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP). The overall aim of the JMP is to report globally on the status of water supply and sanitation sector, and to support countries in improving their monitoring performance to enable better planning and management at the country level. The JMP is the official arrangement within the UN System to produce information for the UN Secretary General on the progress of achieving the Millennium Development Goals related to water supply and sanitation.

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT:

REPUBLIC ACT NO. 9003 (ECOLOGICAL SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT ACT OF 2000)
AN ACT PROVIDING FOR AN ECOLOGICAL SOLID WASTE

MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, CREATING THE NECESSARY INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS AND INCENTIVES, DECLARING CERTAIN ACTS PROHIBITED AND PROVIDING PENALTIES, APPROPRIATING FUNDS THEREFOR, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Declaration of Policies. - It is hereby declared the policy of the State to adopt a systematic, comprehensive and ecological solid waste management program which shall: (a) Ensure the environment; protection of the public health and

(b) Utilize environmentally-sound methods that maximize the utilization of valuable resources and encourage resource conservation and recovery; (c) Set guidelines and targets for solid waste avoidance and volume reduction through source reduction and waste minimization measures, including composting, recycling, reuse, recovery, green charcoal process, and others, before collection, treatment and disposal in appropriate and environmentally sound solid waste management facilities in accordance with ecologically sustainable development principles; (d) Ensure the proper segregation, collection, transport, storage, treatment and disposal of solid waste through the formulation and adoption of the best environmental practice in ecological waste management excluding incineration; (e) Promote national research and development programs for improved solid waste management and resource conservation techniques, more effective institutional arrangement and indigenous and improved methods of waste reduction, collection, separation and recovery; (f) Encourage greater private sector participation in solid waste management;

(g) Retain primary enforcement and responsibility of solid waste management with local government units while establishing a cooperative effort among the national government, other local government units, non- government organizations, and the private sector; (h) Encourage cooperation and self-regulation among waste generators through the application of market-based instruments; (i) Institutionalize public participation in the development and implementation of national and local integrated, comprehensive, and ecological waste management programs; and (j) Strength the integration of ecological solid waste management and resource conservation and recovery topics into the academic curricula of formal and non-formal education in order to promote environmental awareness and action among the citizenry.

Environmental Management for Vector Control

WHO defines Environmental Management for Vector Control as the planning, organization, carrying out and monitoring of activities for the modification and/or manipulation of environmental factors or their interaction with man with a view to preventing or minimising vector propagation and reducing man-vector-pathogen contact. It may entail one of two options (or both): environmental modification (permanent infrastructural changes of a capital-intensive nature) and environmental manipulation (recurrent actions aimed at achieving temporary unfavourable conditions for vector breeding). WHO has, for many years, worked with FAO and UNEP on the promotion of EMVC and continues to promote it as part of Integrated Vector Management. Current activities of the WHO Water, Sanitation and Health Programme include the development of a methodology to estimate the fraction of the burden of vector-borne diseases that can be attributed to components of water

resources development and the promotion of good practice in water management and other environmental management approaches. WSH also provides inputs into WHOs Malaria programme and links with the CGIAR System-wide Initiative on Malaria and Agriculture (SIMA). Since Environmental Management was the mainstay of vector-borne disease control in the preDDT era, several historic reviews have highlighted the potential of this approach in the reduction of reliance on pesticides. WHO/WSH will initiate the production of a CD-ROM containing such grey literature on the history of Environmental Management.
Burden of Disease work: assessing the burden, analysing the cost-effectiveness of intervention options

Including environmental management measures as health safeguards in water resources development projects requires action and investment from outside the health sector. Ministries of agriculture, energy or water resources, local authorities or private corporations need to be convinced, with solid evidence, that it is worth investing in health. And that such investments translate in greater chances of success, sustainability and, ultimately, economic return of their projects. It is therefore crucial that the health benefits of such measures (and the costs of not including them) are translated into economic terms that can be part of a larger balance sheet of investments and returns. With a view to providing a methodology to analyse the cost-effectiveness of environmental management as compared to other vector control and disease control measures in specific settings, guidelines (PEEM 3) were developed. WSH has now embarked on a study, commissioned from the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, to develop a methodology of estimating the relative burden of vector-borne diseases as it is associated with components of water resources development. The four diseases covered are malaria, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and Japanese encephalitis.