Join the United Wash Campaign and use the Football World Cup to help the cause of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene

Wash United Logo

WASH United is a coalition of international and African civil society organizations, United Nations agencies, governments and leading actors from the world of football using the power of sport to promote safe drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for all people, everywhere. In their campaign for the 2010 World Cup, WASH United focuses on eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Mali, Lesotho, Uganda and Tanzania). In addition, WASH United has also targeted activities taking place in Europe to raise awareness among the general public and decision makers.
WASH United is also a Club that already counts among its members some of the world’s biggest football stars like Didier Drogba, Nwankwo Kanu or Stephen Appiah. WSSCC is a partner to this project and calls on all members to join this great initiative. Join WASH United and Take Action:

§  As an individual living in a community or country where people lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, you can help by :
- Inviting your friends and family to team up with WASH United
- Informing your friends, colleagues, peers and family about the importance of WASH for health and dignity
- Spreading the word that football superstars like Didier Drogba, Nwankwo Kanu or Stephen Appiah are now Champions for WASH
- Circulating WASH United materials and participating in WASH United Events
- Approaching local and national decision makers and demanding that they increase efforts to ensure WASH for all
- Helping to generate political will at the international level by signing our petitions

§  As an individual living in a community or country where all people enjoy access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, you can help by:
- Inviting your friends and family to team up with WASH United
- Informing  your friends, colleagues, peers and family about the water and sanitation crisis in many parts of the world – and encouraging them to act
- Purchasing the WASH United Team Shirt at our cooperation partner
- Engaging with the Parliamentarian representing your community and/or the Ministry in charge of development cooperation, calling for a stronger focus on WASH in your country’s development cooperation
- Creating political pressure: write to your Member of Parliament and demand vigorous efforts to end the water and sanitation crisis
- Helping to generate political will at the international level and act in solidarity with people lacking access to WASH by signing our petitions

Join WASH United

To know more and to register, go to www.wash-united.org.

SPLASH, the ERA-NET of the European Water Initiative will launch a research call on 1st March, 2010

SPLASH research call on sustainable sanitation service chains

SPLASH, the ERA-NET of the European Water Initiative will launch a research call on 1st March, 2010. The overall call budget will be approx. 1.7 Mio Euro. The call will be funded by the following donors:

• Austria Development Cooperation (ADC), Austria
• Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom
• Ministère des Affaires Étrangères et Européenes (MAEE), France
• Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Sweden
• Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Switzerland

The deadline for submitting concept notes is April 23, 13:00 (CET).

1. Topics of the call

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the rates of urbanization have generally exceeded the capacities of national and local governments to plan and manage sanitation systems in an efficient, equitable and sustainable way. Improving sanitation services to the urban poor is an urgent priority that will have major positive impacts on human health and dignity, economic productivity and the environment. Research is required to support these efforts.

The major objective of the SPLASH research call is to contribute to the understanding and implementation at scale of sustainable sanitation service chains in low-income urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa.

2. Expected projects and expected results

Proposals to be submitted under the SPLASH call should focus on investigation of the sanitation service systems in low-income urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. They may consider both working and dysfunctional systems, by investigating and evaluating key factors for success or failure of a system. In particular, proposals should address three main issues:

• The role of service providers, to better understand the nature of the public and private market and its mechanisms in urban sanitation systems.
• The urban sanitation market, to understand and quantify the financial flows in urban sanitation systems, to investigate how the urban poor can participate in the urban sanitation market and to design pro-poor sanitation financing mechanisms.
• The role of policies and regulatory frameworks in shaping sustainable urban sanitation service chains, to understand the key factors of an enabling environment for pro-poor urban sanitation.

Project results should contribute to:

• Understand sustainable sanitation service chains in urban areas from a financial, social, institutional and technical point of view;
• Determine good practice, innovative models, key success factors and barriers for the implementation of sanitation service chains for the urban poor;
• Formulate evidence-based policy recommendations and institutional arrangements that further large-scale implementation of sustainable sanitation service chains in poor urban areas.

3. Eligibility criteria

Each research consortium must be transnational and consist of a minimum of 3 independent legal entities. At least 2 consortium partners must be from one or more African countries and at least 1 consortium partner must be from an European country.

The research projects commissioned by the SPLASH call on sanitation service chains will be limited to 36 month in duration. Each research consortia can apply for a total SPLASH research contribution in the range of 250’000 – 500’000 Euro.

Eligible participants entitled to funding are legal entities like research institutes, universities, private companies including SMEs, public administrations, civil society organisations, and non-governmental organisations from countries of Africa and from European countries.

4. Application procedure and evaluation

The SPLASH research call will employ a two stage application process: in a first step, consortia are invited to submit concept notes. Subsequently, shortlisted consortia will be invited to submit full proposals.

The evaluation process consists of three steps: In step 1 and 2, concept notes and full proposals will be evaluated in a peer-review process; in step 3, the projects to be funded will be selected by an international panel of science and development experts.

5. Forms, guidelines and further information

A detailed applicant’s guide and templates for the submission of concept notes will be available on the SPLASH website www.splash-era.net/sanitation-call, by March 1, the official launching date of the call.

For further questions, please contact the call secretariat:

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Manfred Kaufmann
manfred.kaufmann@deza.amin.ch

Cholera in Africa “A Lion in Our Village”

In the march 12 2009 New England Journal of Medicine there was an excellent article on Cholera an easily treatable illness be  ignored

source http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/11/1060 New England Journal of Medicine  march 12 2009  Volume 360:1060-1063 number 11

Eric D. Mintz, M.D., and Richard L. Guerrant, M.D. authors

following excerpts from  :

A Lion in Our Village — The Unconscionable Tragedy of Cholera in Africa

“Inexcusably, the completely preventable ancient scourge of cholera rages among poverty-stricken and displaced people today, with as many as one in five persons with severe illness dying for lack of safe drinking water and sanitation and a simple therapy consisting of salt, sugar, and water. Cholera, a dreaded waterborne disease of centuries past, remains a troubling barometer — and often a fatal consequence — of inadequate access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Epidemic cholera is the indicator of widespread contamination of drinking water with human feces. As such, it is the bellwether of many less dramatic but equally fatal or disabling diseases that flourish in filth and a litmus test of our willingness to tolerate flagrant violations of the human right to clean water and sanitation….”

“…Unlike the severe acute respiratory syndrome, avian influenza, and other infectious-disease threats that have emerged recently, cholera is easily avoided and easily treated. The failure of the global community to mobilize the resources needed to prevent and to treat cholera among the less fortunate reflects our lack of commitment to equity and social justice. Improving access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, and basic health services are among the core Millennium Development Goals agreed to by all United Nations member states.

Epidemic cholera represents a fundamental failure of governance, and bold and visionary leadership is required if we are to attack its root causes. Such leadership has been demonstrated in other contexts in Africa. For example, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda began to change public attitudes toward the human immunodeficiency virus and succeeded in reducing the rates of AIDS in his country, in part by recharacterizing the disease as similar to any other threat to the community: “When a lion comes into your village,” he said, “you must raise the alarm loudly.”…”

“…It is time to sound the alarm again. Whereas reported case fatality rates for cholera in the rest of the world are now well below 1%, rates in excess of 5% are still commonly reported in many African countries.¹ According to United Nations agencies, the cumulative case fatality rate in the ongoing cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe remained stubbornly above 4.7% through February 12, 2009, by which point 5 months had elapsed since the epidemic began, and more than 73,000 cases and 3500 deaths had been reported…

[Article's] Source Information

Dr. Mintz is leader of the Diarrheal Diseases Epidemiology Team, Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta. Dr. Guerrant is the director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville.

Full  article: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/11/1060 New England Journal of Medicine  march 12 2009  Volume 360:1060-1063 number 11

[Article's] References

1. Gaffga NH, Tauxe RV, Mintz ED. Cholera: a new homeland in Africa? Am J Trop Med Hyg 2007;77:705-713. [Free Full Text]
2. Ram PK, Choi M, Blum LS, Wamae AW, Mintz ED, Bartlett AV. Declines in case management of diarrhoea among children less than five years old. Bull World Health Organ 2008;86:E-F. [Medline]
3. Roy SK, Hossain MJ, Khatun W, et al. Zinc supplementation in children with cholera in Bangladesh: randomised controlled trial. BMJ 2008;336:266-268. [Free Full Text]
4. Guerrant RL, Oriá RB, Moore SR, Oriá MOB, Lima AAM. Malnutrition as an enteric infectious disease with long-term effects on child development. Nutr Rev 2008;66:487-505. [CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
5. Lucas MES, Deen JL, von Seidlein L, et al. Effectiveness of mass oral cholera vaccination in Beira, Mozambique. N Engl J Med 2005;352:757-767. [Free Full Text]

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