‘Let’s turn challenges into opportunities’
The Daily Star's diplomatic correspondent Porimol Palma recently caught up with Hasin Jahan, country director of WaterAid, to talk about the Covid-19 crisis from the perspective of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).
TDS: What are your thoughts on the Covid-19 crisis and the serious toll it is taking on our lives?
Hasin Jahan: Covid-19 is an unprecedented crisis that is testing our resilience. While medical treatment is absolutely important, we are observing a treatment-centric response without adequate attention to preventive measures.
The government has formed a technical advisory committee of 17 members, most of whom are doctors of various specialisations, but there is no public health or WASH expert. As such, the preventive measures remain overlooked.
We should keep in mind Covid-19 is a highly contagious disease. To effectively counter further spread, we should drastically scale up preventive measures. The institutional response appears ad-hoc -- everyone is on a "firefighter mode". However, a holistic planning including preventive measures is not there.
TDS: Can Covid-19 pandemic be turned into an opportunity from WASH perspective?
Hasin Jahan: Water, sanitation, as well as hygiene are all linked with Covid-19 prevention. We are constantly emphasising the importance of handwashing with water and soap as a simple but highly effective preventive measure. Addressing WASH aspects may be challenging, but we can also turn this into an opportunity by instilling sustained hygiene behavioral change that would last beyond the crisis.
Even after long periods of awareness raising and hygiene promotion, handwashing practice remains inadequate. Now, because of the Covid-19 situation, people are becoming more aware of the need to wash hands and practice good hygiene. We can build on this to make this practice long lasting. However, the availability of resources or adequate investment in hygiene remain an underlying factor of this predicted success.
TDS: What needs to be done to accomplish this?
Hasin Jahan: Our focus should be making a long term behavioral change that would last beyond the current outbreak. We need to influence people to adapt good hygiene as part of their daily life. For that, it is essential to work on three interlinked factors -- building knowledge, creating an enabling environment, and stimulating willingness.
All of these would naturally require huge levels of investment. WASH investment planning by the government should be part of an overall public health strategy. Covid-19 is showing us the extent of the economic and social losses from a public health hazard. This should be a lesson to invest more on WASH to prevent these losses.
TDS: What is your organisation doing to promote healthy and hygienic behaviour?
Hasin Jahan: WaterAid has been promoting its mission of clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene in Bangladesh for the last thirty-five years, both on the field and on the national policy levels.
In the context of Covid-19, WaterAid has designed a response plan with these in mind. We have reached various groups in both rural and urban areas, including vulnerable populations, like slum dwellers and persons with disabilities, with tailored awareness messages using a variety of channels, such as broadcasting messages through loudspeakers, banners, posters, and community radio. We have partnered with WHO and IEDCR to disseminate Covid-19 preventive measures and handwashing steps.
It is essential to reach people with tailored hygiene messages, as well as facilitating the practice of handwashing with soap and water through context-specific handwashing stations. We have developed twenty-two types of portable handwashing stations which are placed at strategic points to encourage handwashing.
TDS: What would be your call to the government?
Hasin Jahan: We need to have a holistic and far-sighted vision when addressing this crisis. The government needs to update the "National Hygiene Promotion Strategy in 2012" to address epidemic diseases including Covid-19 and align it to the Sustainable Development Goals. Presently, WASH budgetary allocation is inadequate, and there is a large disparity between urban and rural areas, especially remote areas like chars, haors, and coastal zones.
It is also necessary to establish equity in water pricing through multiple slabs like in electricity tariffs. Otherwise people in low-income communities will compromise their frequent handwashing practice to save money. As we strive to prevent further spread of Covid-19, improve WASH outcomes and achieve health benefits beyond this crisis, we need to ensure that vulnerable communities are not left behind.
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