Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Today, more than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and more than 2 billion people live without access to adequate sanitation. These shortcomings have a dramatic effect on public health around the world – diarrhea alone kills nearly 2 million people worldwide each year, the vast majority of whom are children under the age of five. Furthermore, in many parts of the world, populations who nominally have “improved service” suffer problems of both water quality and service reliability.
Sanitation is likewise deficient, with huge global shortfalls in basic access to a hygienic toilet, and deficient household standards and service provision. Wastewater service, for example, is limited by a focus only on collection of domestic liquid waste, with next to no investment made in treatment of waste before discharge into water courses. The poor suffer disproportionately from this low quality of service.
To learn more about USAID's sanitation projects, visit the Sanitation Working Group page.
USAID’s substantial investments in water supply and sanitation reflect the urgent need to safeguard water resources for the well-being of both people and the environment throughout the developing world. To realize these goals, USAID is following a multi-pronged approach in the water and sanitation sector, which includes the following:
- Building Capacity of Small-scale Service Providers
- Strengthening Water and Sanitation Utilities
- Mobilizing Domestic Capital for Infrastructure Development
- Improving Household and Community-level Hygiene and Sanitation
- Exploiting Synergies Between Disaster Relief Efforts and Water and Sanitation Projects
USAID has responded aggressively to these challenges, making water supply and sanitation projects the highest funded category of water-related activities at the Agency. For all aspects of water supply and sanitation access and improved quality of services, there are very different challenges and opportunities presented in the urban, peri-urban and rural contexts. USAID customizes its interventions accordingly, while also promoting shared learning to adapt and modify interventions for success.
- Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP) –
HIP aims to promote improvement of three key hygiene practices for diarrheal disease reduction: handwashing with soap; household water treatment and safe storage; and safe feces disposal.
- Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia) Program – ECO-Asia is a regional program that promotes improved access to clean water and sanitation; sustainable management of natural resources and biodiversity conservation; improved tsunami response and reconstruction; and investment in clean energy technologies.
- West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) – WAWI is currently engaged in water supply, sanitation, hygiene, and integrated water resources management activities that will provide benefits to more than 500,000 people in West Africa by 2008.
- Community Watersheds Partnership Program [PDF 648KB] – This partnership between the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), USAID, and the non-governmental organization the Global Environment and Technology Foundation (GETF) addresses specific local water resources and development needs.
- Indonesia Environmental Services Program (ESP) – ESP works to address the linkages between environmental health, water resource protection, biodiversity conservation and critical land rehabilitation in six of the most densely populated provinces in Indonesia.
- Water and Development Alliance (WADA) – In conjunction with local USAID Missions and Coca-Cola system partners (foundations and bottling facilities), and with support from the Global Environment and Technology Foundation (GETF), WADA contributes to protecting and improving the sustainability of watersheds, increasing access to water supply and sanitation services for the world’s poor, and enhancing productive uses of water.
- CDC/Safewater – The Safe Water System (SWS) is an intervention that employs simple and inexpensive technologies to improve water quality. The purpose of SWS is to make water safe through disinfection and safe storage at the point of use.
- Point-of-Use Water Disinfection and Zinc Treatment (POUZN) – The POUZN project is designed to expand the long-term, sustainable, commercial availability of zinc and point-of-use water treatment techniques in order to reduce mortality and morbidity from diarrhea.
- Public-Private Partnership on Handwashing (PPP Handwashing) – USAID’s objectives for the support of this initiative are to reduce the incidence of diarrheal diseases in poor communities through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) promoting handwashing with soap. The initiative implements large scale national handwashing interventions and uses lessons-learned to promote the approach at global level.
- WHO International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) – To accelerate health gains to those without reliable access to safe drinking water, WHO established a network aimed at promoting HWTS. The network format optimizes flexibility, participation and creativity to support coordinated action.
- HIV-affected Families and Water/Sanitation Hygiene – The risks of low access to water and sanitation services are magnified for HIV-infected, immuno-compromised individuals. The added burden affects not only the HIV infected, but their entire family, increasing risk of diarrheal disease and lost productivity.
- Safe Water Partnerships [PDF 592KB] – The Safe Water Partnerships program uses a market-based approach and strong NGO involvement to target diarrheal diseases in vulnerable populations by providing water disinfectant and safe water storage, as well as advocating improved hygiene.
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