Fifty seven percent of healthcare facilities in the country are not meeting basic World Health Organisation standards on water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash), according to a study.<\/p>\n
The study was conducted by United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (Unicef) Chief of Social Policy, Edward Archibald, Chrispin Bokho of Water and Environmental Sanitation Network and Engineers Without Borders.<\/p>\n
The three say client-latrine coverage stands at a meagre 37 percent in public health facilities while 5.2 million Malawians use unsanitary, or shared, latrines, with a further 1.4 million having no latrine at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot still needs to be done to improve access, equity and quality of Wash [water, sanitation and hygiene] services,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n
The report, titled \u2018Investing in Water and Sanitation for All Malawians\u2019, blames poor operation and maintenance of Wash facilities on limited human, technical and financial resources in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development and Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n
It says, between 2012 and 2016, the vacancy rates of technical staff in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development and Ministry of Health, which relate to Wash at district level, averaged 54 percent and 75 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cInsufficient technical staff, coupled with low recurrent budgets means district councils have limited capacity to effectively maintain water points and sanitation systems. It is estimated that approximately 30 percent of water points are not functional at any point in time, while around 50 percent of water points in some districts are permanently not working,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifty seven percent of healthcare facilities in the country are not meeting basic World Health Organisation standards on water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash), according to a study. The study was conducted by United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (Unicef) Chief of Social Policy, Edward Archibald, Chrispin Bokho of Water and Environmental Sanitation Network and Engineers Without Borders. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67139,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67133\/revisions\/67139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}