{"id":28205,"date":"2023-07-21T19:59:09","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T14:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/?post_type=current-affairs&#038;p=28205"},"modified":"2023-07-21T19:59:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T14:29:09","slug":"progress-on-household-drinking-water-sanitation-and-hygiene-wash-2000-2022","status":"publish","type":"current-affairs","link":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/current-affairs\/progress-on-household-drinking-water-sanitation-and-hygiene-wash-2000-2022","title":{"rendered":"Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) 2000-2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Context:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A new report released by <\/span><b>UNICEF and WHO, &#8221; Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) 2000-2022: Special focus on gender&#8221;<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> presents updated national, regional and global estimates for WASH in households for the period 2000 to 2022.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><b>Probable Question:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Q. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What are various challenges associated with hygiene and sanitation in India. Discuss various measures launched by the government to deal with them. (250 words)<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><b>Key Findings from the report:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Lack of water supply:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Globally, <\/span><b>1.8 billion people<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> live in households without water supplies on the premises.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Disproportionate burden on women:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Women and girls aged 15 and older are primarily responsible for water collection in 7 out of 10 households, compared with 3 in 10 households for their male peers. Girls under 15 (7 %) are also more likely than boys under 15 (4 %) to fetch water.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Lack of Private Space:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Among 51 countries with available data, women and adolescent girls in the poorest households and those with disabilities are the most likely to lack a private place to wash and change.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Loss of lives:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 1.4 million lives are lost each year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Disproportionate Impact on Women: <\/b>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc;\">\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b style=\"background-color: var(--global--color-background); color: var(--global--color-primary); font-family: var(--global--font-secondary); font-size: var(--global--font-size-base);\">Loss of education:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Additional time spent on domestic chores can also limit girls\u2019 chances of completing secondary school and gaining employment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Poor quality of life: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In most cases, women and girls make longer journeys to collect it, losing time in education, work, and leisure, and putting themselves at risk of physical injury and dangers on the way.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Compromised Privacy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More than half a billion people still share sanitation facilities with other households, compromising women\u2019s and girls\u2019 privacy, dignity, and safety.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Vicious cycles of poverty: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unsafe water, toilets, and handwashing at home robs girls of their potential, compromises their well-being, and perpetuates cycles of poverty.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Health risks:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Inadequate WASH services increase health risks for women and girls and limit their ability to safely and privately manage their periods.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Increased vulnerabilities:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They face additional health risks because they are vulnerable to harassment, violence, and injury when they have to go outside the home to haul water or just to use the toilet.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><b>Right to Water and Sanitation:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The United Nations officially declared <\/span><b>access to water and sanitation as a human right<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to reinforce people\u2019s right to clean and decent toilets.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This established the significance of <\/span><b>Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for not only better health outcomes, but overall human dignity.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><b>Roadmap suggested by the report:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Accelerating Progress:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 Achieving the Sustainable Development Goal target for universal access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation, and basic hygiene services by 2030 will require a six-fold increase in current rates of progress for safely managed drinking water, a five-fold increase for safely managed sanitation, and a three-fold increase for basic hygiene services.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Gender specific interventions:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Responding to girls\u2019 needs in the design and implementation of WASH programmes is critical to reaching universal access to water and sanitation and achieving gender equality and empowerment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Targeting gender equality:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Efforts are needed to ensure that progress on WASH contributes towards gender equality, including integrated gender considerations in WASH programmes and policies and disaggregated data collection and analysis.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Status of Health and Hygiene in India:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Lack of clean water access:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> As of 2020 over 165 million Indians did not have access to constant clean water, close to 600 million live in water-stressed regions, and 63 per cent households do not have access to water within their homes.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Water scarce regions:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Water scarce areas in India, dependent on government and municipal water tankers, receive a maximum of 25L of water per person per day, amounting to 125L for an average family of five. This is in stark contrast to median and high-income households that use anywhere from 200L-600 L per person per day.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Water Contamination:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> While many regions in India face significant water scarcity issues, nearly 70% of all of the country\u2019s fresh water in the ground or on the surface is contaminated.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Stunting and wasting:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In spite of the initiatives being taken to eradicate the risks of unsanitary livelihood, India still has higher rates of stunting and wasting among children under five years of age, due to poor sanitation<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Challenges associated with Health and Hygiene:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Data discrepancies:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Although India was declared open-defecation-free (ODF) in 2019, several reports indicate the persistence of open-defecation in regions labelled ODF, defunct toilets, and discrepancies between the SBM administrative data and National Sample Survey data.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Timely wage payments:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There have also been reports of non-payment of wages to swachhagrahis. If such policy implementation gaps are not bridged, regions with poor sanitation and lack of adequate toilets will continue to fail their women.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Lack of knowledge:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ground reports show that knowledge of proper menstrual hygiene practices is still lacking.Even though ASHA workers continue to raise awareness, there are cases where 80 percent of women and girls in villages continue to practice unhygienic MHM.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Paucity of hygiene management at the workplace:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 The paucity of clean and separate toilets for women in the urban working landscape discourages and restricts women from joining the workforce, in addition to several factors that already hinder their labour force participation.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Lack of gender tracking system:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Even while WASH policies are gender-sensitive or gender-transformative in their design and planning, they fail to measure the gendered impact of the policy.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Current Measures by India to improve sanitation and hygiene:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Flagship programmes:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) and Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) aim to provide safe and adequate drinking water to every household in India.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Atal Bhujal Yojana: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The gender strategy for the policy tracks the participation of women in the scheme. It requires 33 percent women members in Water Use Associations (WUA) at the Gram Panchayat level to allow holistic participation of women in water budgeting, water security planning, and monitoring implementation progress.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>SPM-NIWAS:\u00a0 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Set up under the Ministry of Jal Shakti as an autonomous institution and to develop as an apex institution for drinking water and sanitation of international repute, undertake academic activities, research work, training and capacity development of public health engineers and other stakeholders.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The MHM guidelines, issued by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, provide a well-defined MHM framework that incorporates IEC initiatives, better WASH infrastructure, availability and safe disposal of menstrual absorbents, and participation of communities and schools, to make adolescent girls capable of continuing their education and ending the taboo around menstruation.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya (SBSV) programme: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Provide gender-segregated toilet facilities for girls and boys in government elementary and secondary schools.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Innovative solutions to address WASH challenges:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> JJM has created a market for products and services related to water supply, such as water quality testing kits, leak detection devices, and water treatment technologies. SBM has led to the development of innovative solutions in the sanitation sector, such as low-cost toilets, wastewater and faecal sludge management solutions, and behaviour change communication campaigns.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Sustainable solutions by social enterprises: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Underserved communities are beginning to show signs of acceptance and support from sustainable solutions on offer by social enterprises.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Way Forward for India:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Basic WASH facilities:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The need of the hour in terms of hygiene and healthcare for women in India is to improve access to basic sanitation facilities and clean water, and to provide adequate hygiene facilities in the workplace.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Infrastructure:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This includes investing in infrastructure such as toilets and water wells, as well as education campaigns to raise awareness about the importance of hygiene.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Hygiene management facilities at workplace: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Providing menstrual hygiene management facilities in workplaces and schools is also crucial.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Healthcare Providers:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Increasing the number of trained healthcare providers, especially in rural and underprivileged areas, to ensure that women have access to the healthcare they need.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Accessibility and affordability of medicines:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Improving the availability and affordability of essential medicines and supplies can also help to ensure that women receive the care they need.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Women led transformation:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Role of It is important to involve communities, especially women and girls, in the design and implementation of sanitation and hygiene programs. This can help to ensure that the facilities and services provided meet the specific needs of women and girls and are used and maintained.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Training women:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Training women and empowering them to train others has turned out to be an excellent way to ensure safe sanitation for all in a community<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Enabling Environment:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> To ensure that everyone has access to the new solutions and that they are affordable, governments and stakeholders must work towards creating an enabling environment for innovations to thrive.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Awareness and sensitization drives:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Regularity of sanitation-related awareness and sensitization drives in communities needs to be increased so that there is an attitudinal change even at the household level.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>School Curriculum:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bringing the importance of Wash into the curriculum of schools is one way of ensuring that the importance of the issue remains top and center in the minds of teachers, students and administrators.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b style=\"background-color: var(--global--color-background); color: var(--global--color-primary); font-family: var(--global--font-secondary); font-size: var(--global--font-size-base);\">News Source: <\/b><a style=\"background-color: var(--global--color-background); font-family: var(--global--font-secondary); font-size: var(--global--font-size-base);\" href=\"https:\/\/www.financialexpress.com\/healthcare\/news-healthcare\/women-and-girls-bear-brunt-of-water-and-sanitation-crisis-reveals-new-unicef-who-report\/3159448\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>Financial Express<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context:\u00a0 A new report released by UNICEF and WHO, &#8221; Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) 2000-2022: Special focus on gender&#8221; presents updated national, regional and global estimates for WASH in households for the period 2000 to 2022. Probable Question: Q. What are various challenges associated with hygiene and sanitation in India.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/current-affairs\/progress-on-household-drinking-water-sanitation-and-hygiene-wash-2000-2022\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) 2000-2022<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[2847,1281,1744,1145],"paper-wise":[2084],"subject":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/current-affairs\/28205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/current-affairs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/current-affairs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/current-affairs\/28205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28205"},{"taxonomy":"paper-wise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper-wise?post=28205"},{"taxonomy":"subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwonlyias.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subject?post=28205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}