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WASH in Schools: An urgent need of the hour
WATER AND SANITATION
WASH in schools is globally recognised as a key intervention to promote children’s right to health and clean environment and to influence a generational change in health promotion behaviour and attitudes. If school children have access to clean and appropriate toilets, functioning hand washing facilities with soap, sufficient and safe drinking water and have developed adequate hygiene skills, they will:
- Be healthier.
- Perform better in school,
- Positively influence the hygiene practices among their family members and the wider commu
- Have learnt to observe, communicate, cooperate, and listen, to take and carry out decisions about their own hygiene conditions and practices and those of their friends and the younger siblings whose hygiene they are responsible for. They will also be able to apply these skills in other aspects of their lives,
- Change their current hygiene behaviour but also use better hygiene practices in future when they are likely to become parents, teachers, health staff or other workers,
- Learn about menstrual hygiene and physical and emotional changes during puberty, which will encourage girls to come to school during menstruation and will help to avoid menstrual odour, discomfort and potential urinal and vaginal infections,
- Learn about the equal division of hygiene-related tasks (cleaning of toilets, fetching and boiling water, taking care of sick people) between boys and girls.
School is important for cognitive, creative and social development of children. So, the Water Sanitation and Hygiene Education in school are necessary for the safe, secure and healthy environment for children to learn better and face the challenges of future life. Water Sanitation and Hygiene Education in schools has now become a reality of school centric development action being realized by most of the schools.
If sanitary facilities in schools are available, they can act as a model, and teachers can function as role models. Schools can also influence communities through outreach activities, since through their students; schools are in touch with a large proportion of the households in a community.
However, inadequate school WASH facilities contribute towards disease burden among children causing dropouts, absenteeism, retarded intellectual progress and inability to participate in games / sports / extracurricular active ties. Several studies have pointed out poor WASH situation hampers enrolment, retentions and completion of education by girls
Unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene practices are major causes of morbidity and mortality. The Department of Drinking Water Supply (DDWS) reported that five of the ten most common causes of death in children are due to poor WASH situations.
The Government of India (GoI) has launched a major program to improve school infrastructure and 200,000 school toilet blocks were built in the last financial year (2009-10) alone. But the progress in not similar in all the areas and particularly in tribal areas on various pretexts the scheme is not implemented properly depriving the school children their assured rights.
What is more alarming is the fact that most of the toilets are non-functional due to poor maintenance, lack of water supply, behavioural gaps in the users, non-availability of accessories like soap, wash-brush, dilapidated soak pits, dirty surroundings and lack of any effective initiative by school authorities, teachers and students.
Government and CSO studies indicate close linkage between WASH and child enrolment as well as performance in schools. This evidence is further supported by many cross country examples documented in UNICEF reports. Hence, UNICEF has accepted school health and hygiene education (SHHE) as a major component of its school health program. There are efforts to improve school WASH through higher budgetary allocations, release of grants to districts, provision for construction of quality sanitary complexes along with hygiene education support.
The following points present the degree of vulnerability suffered by school children due to very poor WASH arrangements at schools.
- Faulty construction due to defective design or monitoring on quality
- Vertical implementation of sanitation program without ensuring integration of water supply causing non-use, unclean interiors, breeding of flies, mosquitoes, harmful vectors and foul habitat conditions
- Non-detection of worm infestation caused by poor WASH leading to several forms of diseases among children.
- Emphasis on budget spending rather than creating and enabling environment for proper use as well as operation and maintenance.
- Inadequate cooperation of teachers in ensuring the use of installed facilities by children.
- Lack of hygiene orientation and education at schools.
- Indifference towards poor water and sanitation practices.
- Lack of supervision by VEC, PTA/MTA and PRIs
- Lack of capacity for monitoring water quality and taking remedial action.
- Inadequate coordination between school authorities and line departments implementing the construction projects.
- Inadequate convergence among technical and resource agencies to forge partnerships for overcoming gaps and shortfalls.
- Lack of community involvement and participation (village water and sanitation committee) in demand generation and advocacy for timely release of grants and completion of project followed by proper use and maintenance.
- Lack of space enabling children to articulate and express their difficulties.
- Lack of holistic perspective to use School-WASH as a platform for demonstration and multiplication
The proper WASH initiatives shall contribute towards improvement in health, education and improved well being of children and communities as well. Child participation shall be promoted through active association and leadership role of student health club members at school, village, GP and higher level. The girl child education shall get a fillip by improved enrolment, retention and completion level thanks to integration of child friendly elements in school environment. The learning abilities of children shall improve due to decrease in preventable morbidity burden on account of unhygienic living and sanitary conditions. It will also boost self esteem, self confidence and personality development of children through energetic participation in games, sports and extracurricular activities. Differently able children shall be freed from the psychological harassment and physical drudgery caused by open air defecation. Further, over all the good practices of the school shall form tangible habits among the students and through them get communicated to their respective families and communities facilitating desirable behaviour changes generating demand for accelerated implementation of total sanitation program of the government. This provides adequate justification for the WASH in schools pinpointing specific areas of interventions