Climate change and sanitation access.

This year, the theme of World Toilet Day (WTD), an international campaign to help tackle the sanitation crisis is sustainable sanitation and climate change. The theme highlights the effects of climate change on water access and the sanitation service chain which is a central challenge in Africa. 

Firstly, climate change has caused annual rainfall and water availability to become less predictable (Trentberth 2011), increasing the number of water-stressed regions which is a particular concern with the spatial and temporal variations of rainfall in Africa (Damkjaer and Taylor 2016). Furthermore, extreme weather events such as flash flooding are perpetuated which have increased across southern Africa dramatically since 1980, shown in Figure 1. WEF considers these to be one of the most likely risks to food production over the next ten years.

Figure 1, shows the presence of climate related events in the last 30 years. UNICEF 2020


How does this affect sanitation provision?

The events threaten to destroy water points and contaminate sanitation facilities. For example, recent media headlines shows recent flooding in Sudan has forced the government to declare a three month state of emergency. On July 28th 2020, severe rains fell and intensified throughout August and September causing more than 100,000 people in the state of Khartoum alone to lose their homes to mudslides. 80% of the population depends almost entirely on groundwater accessed via handpumps which have mostly become inaccessible and contaminated. A report by OCHA who have intervened in Sudan, also note the flooding has left stagnant water all over the country which coupled with inadequate waste disposal has allowed vectors such as mosquitoes to breed. This allows exposure to water borne and vector borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria, already common diseases in Sudan which is particularly concerning when 2700 health facilities have been damaged or destroyed by the floods. 


Figure 2 shows the floods in Khartoum, source: BBC News 2020 


Current strategies include hygiene promotion activities and providing households with chlorine purification tablets (which will be discussed soon) from UNICEF with the supervision and support of Government authorities. 

World Toilet Day is not the only element of 2020 to highlight the effect climate change has on service provision. COVID-19 (or SARS) has extenuated the importance of sanitation facilities as according to the WHO, an essential strategy of mitigation is washing hands with soap, a facility which has been effected by the floods. So much so,  as of 15 November 2020, there are 15,047 people confirmed with COVID-19 in Sudan, including 1175 fatalities, according to the Federal Ministry of Health. 

Interestingly, Sudan seems one of the worst affected countries in Africa by COVID-19. The 'WHO sounded alarms for the spread of coronavirus in Africa' ,  however, this appears to be another generalisation of the continent as one. For instance, a piece by Harding (2020) revealed infection and death rate have turned out to be lower than initially thought, particularly in South Africa who's first wave of infection was seven times lower than the UK's. This is possibly due to a younger population, or a stricter lockdown but it demonstrates that generalisations should be avoided. 

Summary

The example of World Toilet Day shows the need for a wider interest in climate change, particularly now when sanitation access is closely linked to the aftermaths of weather events and COVID-19 mitigation. Campaigns such as WTD are therefore strong strategies to raise awareness, although rely on the intervention of external bodies such as UNICEF. 

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