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Cologne/Stockholm. This year’s World Water Week in Stockholm examines the widely neglected and underestimated adverse nutritional impact of lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Arno Coerver, Regional WASH Advisor Asia of Malteser International, the relief service of the Order of Malta for humanitarian aid, states: “Investments into WASH could considerably contribute to reduce malnutrition of children. Even simple and quite cost-saving measures like washing hands with soap are highly efficient and in the end facilitate a better utilization of the available food.”
In the seminar “No food and nutrition security without WASH” organized by the German WASH Network and the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) of the World Bank on 30 August, Coerver will portray experiences Malteser International made in its CLTS (community-led total sanitation) projects in order to show how scaling up sanitation coverage can have a positive impact on the nutritional status of a population. “Following the CLTS approach, even simple water and sanitation measures can reach many people and improve their health and nutrition in a sustainable way”, Coerver says, while Thilo Panzerbieter, chair of the German WASH Network states that: “Reducing faecal infections through sanitation and hygienic behavior is a major means for reducing the malnutrition of children, enhancing the wellbeing of children, women and men, and achieving the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).”
The CLTS approach is based on a close cooperation with the communities who themselves will assume responsibility for an efficient water supply and sanitation in their villages. Coerver: “Based on an analysis of their own behavior – mostly open defecation – the villagers do not only recognize the dangers of their behavior for their health, but they also learn how to prevent diseases and to improve health and nutrition by adopting the right hygienic attitudes and making use of latrines and safe water.”
Further experts like Dr. Kamal Kar, development consultant from India and pioneer of CLTS, Oliver Cumming from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Prof. Robert Chambers from the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom and Linus Dagerskog from the Stockholm Environment Institute will present current evidence and potential of this professional blindspot as well as different WASH approaches for scaling up WASH and improving food and nutrition security using regional case studies. The goal is to get an in-depth understanding of this neglected link and to provide constructive impulses for promising ways forward to strengthen this nexus at scale and push towards fulfillment of the human right to water and sanitation.
Malteser International is running numerous projects in the fields of WASH in Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Haiti as well as in the DR Congo and in South Sudan.
Attention editors: Arno Coerver, Regional WASH Advisor Asia of Malteser International, will be available for interviews in Stockholm. Please contact: +49 221 98 22 155 or +49 171 310 52 79
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Malteser International, the worldwide relief agency of the Sovereign Order of Malta for humanitarian aid, is a member of the German WASH Network. The organisation provides aid in about 100 projects in more than 20 countries without distinction of religion, race or political persuasion. Christian values and the humanitarian principles of impartiality and independence are the foundation of its work. For further information: www.malteser-international.org and www.orderofmalta.int
