WHAT IS WASH IN SCHOOLS?
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in schools refers to a combination of infrastructure (Hardware), its maintenance and behaviour (Software) components that are necessary to produce a healthy school environment and to develop or support appropriate health and hygiene behaviours.
Components of WASH:
• Access to sufficient quantities of safe water for
– Drinking
– Hand-washing and personal hygiene
• Sufficient water for:
– Cooking
• Cleaning, flushing toilets, school gardens, etc
• Toilet facilities that are:
– Child-friendly, gender-specific, culturally and environmentally appropriate, private, safe, and well maintained
• Personal hygiene materials
– soap, sanitary pads, etc
• Hygiene education
– Curriculum, lesson plans, role play, group activities, wall-paintings, competitions etc
• Safe disposal of solid waste
• Control measures to reduce transmission and morbidity of WASH-related illnesses
– Approaches to control vector borne disease
– Diarrhoea prevention and management, De-worming campaigns, nutritional supplements
• Human Resources
– A system of capacity building in place for administrators and teachers
– Teachers with WASH in Schools Orientation
– WASH in Schools on the agenda of the School Management Committee
• Monitoring
– WASH in Schools embedded in the monitoring system of Swachh Patashala and SSA
Impacts related to WASH in Schools
Health
• Diarrhea
• Soil transmitted helminth infections
• Trachoma, scabies
• Acute respiratory infection
• Impaired growth
Non-health
• Educational attainment
– Absenteeism
– Attrition
– Concentration
– Test scores
• Water availability
– Dehydration
• Privacy and safety
• Menstrual management
Long term impacts of WASH on students
· Increases attendance and cognitive development
· Children are more receptive to new ideas and can more easily change their behaviour and promote improved practices within their families and among their communities
· WASH in schools fosters social inclusion and individual self-respect by offering an alternative to stigma and marginalisation
· Hand washing with soap, particularly after contact with excreta, can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 44% and respiratory infections by 30%.
WinS Policy and Strategy
• Right to Education Act (2009) guarantees separate toilets for girls and boys and safe and adequate drinking water in schools.
• Supreme Court Order (2011): “It is imperative that all schools must provide toilet facilities; empirical researches have indicated that wherever toilet facilities are not provided in the schools, parents do not send their children (particularly girls) to schools’’.
• A National Mission: Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya Mission, October 2014 - mandates a ‘essential package’ of WinS intervention
• Swachh Telangana – Swachh Patashala, a State strategy to promote WASH in Schools
Why Schools?
• Schools are an established entry point for learning
• Children are fast learners and adapt their behaviours more easily than adults. Children are also effective role models.
• What they learn at school is likely to be passed on to their peers and siblings, and to their own children if they become parents
• Schools are a natural learning environment, making schoolchildren potentially more receptive to behaviour change and behaviour change education
• Schools are also nodes of disease transmission and therefore should have systems in place to contain spread of disease
Status of WASH in Telangana
• Around 29,000 schools in Telangana
• Approximately 28 lakh students
• More than 7700 toilets need to be constructed
• More than 6000 toilets need repairs
• Around 3200 schools need drinking water facilities
0 Comments:
Post a Comment