08-17-2017, 12:19 AM
Safe disposal of excreta, so that it does not contaminate the environment,
water, food or hands, is essential for ensuring a healthy environment and for
protecting personal health. This can be accomplished in many ways, some
requiring water, others requiring little or none. Regardless of method, the
safe disposal of human faeces is one of the principal ways of breaking the
faecal oral disease transmission cycle. Sanitation is therefore a critical barrier
to disease transmission.
Plans for locating sanitation facilities, and for treating and removing
waste, must consider cultural issues, particularly as sanitation is usually
focused on the household. Excreta disposal may be a difficult subject for a
community to discuss: it may be taboo, or people may not like to discuss
issues they regard as personal and unclean. In some cases, people may feel
that sanitation facilities are not appropriate for children, or that children s
faeces are not harmful. In others, separate facilities may be required for men
and women, and it may be necessary to locate the facilities so that no one can
be seen entering the latrine building. If the disposal facilities smell and are a
breeding ground for flies, people may not use them.
Health improvement comes from the proper use of sanitation facilities, not
simply their physical presence, and they may be abandoned if the level of
service does not meet the social and cultural needs of community members
at an affordable cost, as shown in Figure 4.1. Within a community, several
different sanitation options may be required, with varying levels of convenience
and cost (sometimes called a sanitation ladder). The advantage of this
approach is that it allows households to progressively upgrade sanitation
facilities over time.
4.1 Technologies for
