Toilets and Clean Water Transform Community Health
Results Canada’s Sabina Saini recently travelled to Ethiopia with three Canadian MPs and saw first hand how sanitation and clean water have transformed communities in one of Addis Ababa’s poorest neighbourhoods.
By: Sabina Saini
March 15, 2010
Recently RESULTS Canada, a Canadian advocacy organization I work for, was on a trip with Canadian Members of Parliament. The MPs wanted to see cost-effective life saving solutions towards poverty alleviation in Ethiopia.
In Canada, RESULTS and AMREF have partnered to work together on different projects, so on the final day of the trip we hooked up with AMREF Ethiopia to view their sanitation and hygiene promotion project in the Kechene slum of Addis Ababa.
Sanitation and hygiene promotion are near and dear to my heart. My family hails from northern India, a country where the sanitation crisis is at it's peak. Out of the astounding 2.5 billion people in the world who do not have access to basic sanitation, 665 million of them live in India. Over 500,000 children die each year due to dehydration from diarrhea. These numbers are staggering and completely unacceptable. Diarrhea is easily treated and prevented through basic sanitation and hygiene.
Community Partnership key to Success
The day of our visit, we were warmly greeted in the lobby of our hotel by AMREF’s friendly staff. Dr. Joao Soares, and his team lead us out to the Kechene project. Immediately I had a feeling we were going to see something truly remarkable. True to word, Dr. Soares took us to the Yellow compound where we saw sanitation kiosks that AMREF had constructed for the community.
All in all, there are 19 kiosks of sanitation facilities (one kiosk consists of: a washroom, showers, water taps for water collection, washing compartments and a water reservoir). Once constructed, AMREF works in partnership with the community to sustain the facilities while promoting community mobilization and hygiene education. When the project comes to end AMREF will hand it over to the community who will take ownership of it.
We viewed two different sanitation kiosks and water points. It was a truly amazing experience. The amount of pride people show for their latrines and water tanks was amazing.
In fact, the sanitation kiosks have been so successful that when water pipes fail to deliver much needed water to people in Kechene or in different parts of Addis, people benefitting from AMREF’s project continue to have water without interruption.
Departing with Hope
There is actually a grassroots movement starting to take place among other community groups. People have seen how successful this project is and they are putting pressure on the local government to institute the project in their 
communities as well. But perhaps what was the most remarkable part of the visit was that the incidence of diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea, the two biggest killers of children in the world, had decreased significantly since the project began.
As an advocate for global access to basic sanitation and hygiene promotion, I was overwhelmed with emotion.
Everything that I have been advocating for was in fact saving and leading to healthier lives. I had always known the statistics on the life-saving impact sanitation and hygiene promotion can have, but now I was able to witness it, first hand and meet the beautiful people who were ensuring that members of their community followed these important practices.
I will forever be grateful to AMREF and the wonderful team that we met. Their dedication to their work and to helping people live healthier lives was amazing. After this experience I knew I was leaving Ethiopia not with a sense of despair but with a sense of hope that I will carry with me always.
