N’DJAMENA, Chad, 8 May 2012 – “It was a night in April,” explained
Annour. “Our child began to vomit and have diarrhoea repeatedly. We gave
him water, thinking that it would pass, but it went on. No one in the
village health centre knew what it was, so we decided the next morning
to take him to the hospital in N'Djamena – but he died on the way.”
At the hospital, health workers explained what had killed Annour’s son.
“They told us it was cholera,” he said. “They told me to treat the
water and to clean all the utensils he used and all of the places he had
been sick with chlorine, and to bury his dirty bedding and clothes,”
Annour said. “But for me, this wasn’t enough.”
He has since begun a crusade against cholera.
“I went to a workshop where I got to understand how cholera is
transmitted and the importance of hygiene. I began to sensitize people
in my village.”
Poor access to basic sanitation
Chad has one of the lowest rates of access to safe drinking water and
sanitation services in the world. The result has been recurrent
outbreaks of diseases like polio, meningitis and cholera. While access
to safe water and sanitation is improving in urban areas, children in
rural areas are almost always at risk from these sanitation-related
diseases.
Last year, there were over 17,000 cases of cholera in Chad and 459
deaths. But thanks to Annour's efforts, the village of Fadje was
protected and unaffected.
The workshop Annour attended was run by UNICEF in partnership with
'Healthy Schools, Healthy Homes', a nongovernmental organization that
promotes hygiene practices.
The workshops are part of a ‘Community-Led Total Sanitation’ approach
to improving sanitation and hygiene in rural areas. The approach works
with local communities, empowering residents to end open defecation and
to build and maintain proper latrines.
Improving community health
Amina Ramadane runs 'Healthy
Schools, Healthy Homes'. She travels from village to village, educating
communities about sanitation and hygiene.
“We show them faecal matter and food,” she explained, “and they see
the flies going from the faecal matter to the food and from the food to
the faecal matter, and it’s done. Some people even begin to feel sick,
and people rush off and start building their own latrines.”
Of the 30 villages Ms. Ramadane worked with in 2011, 20 have already
achieved 100 per cent access to latrines. The communities impose their
own rules, and in villages like Fadje, it has become compulsory for
every household to have a latrine and for every member of the family to
use it.
The latrines also improve families’ privacy and dignity.
“I'm blind and can't see anybody, so when I went outside to go to the
toilet, I couldn't see who was there and who was looking at me,”
Mahamat Seid said. “That's why I decided to build my own latrine. And
before, no one knew that our diseases came from the faeces outside, but
with this project everyone now knows and our village is clean.”
Families have also adopted other healthy hygiene practices, such as
chlorinating their drinking water and washing their hands with soap,
further protecting them from disease.
Saving lives a village at a time
Saving lives a village at a time
The project is being implemented in eight regions across Chad.
Since it began, 202 villages have achieved 100 per cent latrine coverage and, with it, cleaner, healthier living conditions.
Chad still has a long way to go to reach the Millennium Development
Goal target of halving, by 2015, the percentage of its population
without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. But through
the efforts of people like Annour and Ms. Ramadane, and with support
from UNICEF, the country is saving lives one village at a time.
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