By: Mohamed Sahr
Sanitation is vital to health, child development, and social and economic progress. Safe sanitation is also a human right essential for the fulfilment of child rights and the achievement of good physical, mental and social well-being recognized as a distinct right by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2015.
In the same year, Member States committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including target 6.2 of the SDGs. That is to say by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.
Progress towards universal healthcare and sanitation is alarmingly off track both in its coverage and practice. However, for many reasons, this challenge is resulting in inequalities and the further marginalization of the most vulnerable of which Sierra Leone is not an exception. With only 10 years left before 2030, the rate at which sanitation coverage is increasing will need to quadruple to achieve SDG target 6.2. At the current rate of progress, it will be the twenty-second century before sanitation for all is a reality, and this is too slow.
Sanitation suffers from chronic under-prioritization, underinvestment and a lack of capacity. While the majority of countries have national policies and plans to support sanitation, few have allocated adequate human and financial resources to actually implement them with typical example to Sierra Leone. Donors tend to prioritize water over sanitation. In fact, aid disbursements for sanitation were half that for drinking-water between 2010 and 2018. Within the larger water and sanitation sector (including, for example, water resources management and river basin development), aid disbursements for sanitation systems in the last nine years have never exceeded 15 per cent of the total. State of World’s Sanitation Report 2020 report showed.
A quadrupling of investment is needed to achieve safely managed sanitation services United Nations 2021, World Health Organization and UNICEF Study portrays. Critical investment areas identified by the UN to stimulate accelerated water and sanitation coverage include financing, data and information, capacity development, governance and innovation (UNICEF/WHO 2020; UN-Water 2020). In Sierra Leone, the 2021 Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) report shows that only 11% of the country’s population uses water sources that are free of contamination and only 14% have access to safely managed sanitation services (WHO/UNICEF 2021).
In urban areas, the situation is only marginally better, with 13% of the population having access to improved water sources that are free from contamination and 20% having access to safely managed sanitation. The water sources and sanitation facilities are mainly off-grid (non-piped) systems (WHO/UNICEF 2021). However, such estimates may not be representative of informal settlements due to their ever increasing formation and residents
The total investment in sanitation from governments and donors is not enough to provide the sustainable, resilient, safely managed services that will bring about substantive benefits to health, the economy and the environment. Achieving universal access to sanitation by 2030 will require dramatic acceleration in current rates of progress. Global rates of progress need to double to achieve basic sanitation for all, and universal access to safely managed sanitation requires them to quadruple.
However, these global averages mask the fact that some countries, and some communities within countries, are starting from a much lower baseline. In these places, the rate of change must be even greater if the pledge to ‘leave no one behind’, made by Member States when they adopted the 2030 Agenda, is to be honored.
It is obvious that sanitation is a public good in need of public funding that will allow everyone to benefit from improved health as well as social and economic development and government has a critical role to play. Poor sanitation creates serious negative externalities, creating public health hazards and jeopardizing economic development for all. Conversely, good sanitation generates economic benefits and unlocks human productivity. Regulation throughout the sanitation chain is crucial to ensure that the benefits are realized by everyone. History shows it can be done. There are many countries that have been successful in making rapid progress in sanitation coverage, transforming lives, the environment and the economy within a generation. With strong political leadership, sufficient resources and a ‘whole-of-government’, multi-stakeholder approach, governments can quickly transform sanitation and sanitation coverage.
More recently, many villages and communities in Sierra Leone have been isolated with little or no safe sanitation facilities in their disposal that which have hindered their well-being as a result of the lack of sanitation facilities into unsafe, communal areas, such as poorly managed public latrines or open defecation areas. Sanitation workers, obliged to keep working as they perform an essential service, add one more health hazard to what is often a long list. State of World’s Sanitation Report 2020 report revealed.
This report presents the state of sanitation in the world today to increase awareness of the progress towards achieving the SDG target for sanitation, and the challenges that remain. Within the context of the recently-developed SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework 5, it presents best practices, successes and challenges. It calls on Member States, the United Nations system and other stakeholders to rise to the challenge learn from one another and work together to achieve universal access to safe sanitation by 2030.
Even though the government has made tremendous efforts in order to earnest universal healthcare and sanitation system in Sierra Leone especially at the height of global crisis with blurring issues and reports made by international and Non- Governmental Organization, there have been divorcing challenges kneeling on the neck of WASH in Sierra Leone.
Prominent among them is Low access to WASH services significantly contributes to diarrhea, acute respiratory infections (ARIs), under-nutrition and worm infestations. It contributes to infections in health care settings and can lead to U5 morbidity and mortality and increased risk of maternal and new-born mortality. It can lead to both boys and girls missing school due to sickness or the time taken to collect water for the family and reduced cognitive attention due to worm infestations. It can also pose additional challenges for girls due to concern over the use of toilets and how to manage their menstrual hygiene.
Supporting WASH interventions in Sierra Leone is therefore critical in improving child health, welfare and developed within WASH in education (SDG4), health care facilities (SDG 3), Menstrual hygiene management and other women and girls interventions (SDG 5), WASH programming to reduce malnutrition – child stunting (SDG 2) to end child poverty (SDG 1); child protection and women from violence and dignity (SDG 16) among others SDGs.
