Despite the massive action on community-led sanitation by NGOs and the government in Bangladesh the rate of open defecation among the children and hard core poor is 20 to 50 per cent, a recent baseline survey revealed. The Health Impact Study Baseline Survey, conducted by International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, (ICDDR,B) in 2007, revealed that still 13 per cent of people are practising open defecation and the practice is most common among children and the hard core poor.

UNICEF and the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) organised the survey as part of the Sanitation, Hygiene, Education and Water Supply in Bangladesh (SHEWA-B) project.

For background information on the SHEWA-B project and the survey see:

• Source Weekly, 16 Feb 2007
• UNICEF Bangladesh - project sheet
• University of Southampton - Presentation by Lisa Danquah, 29 January 2008 on "UNICEF Shewa-B -Findings from Structured Observations, Health Impact Study (HIS)" - abstract
• ICCDR,B, 19 Mar 2007

Source: Daily Star, 28 May 2008 and R4D, 29 May 2008

Tags: hygiene promotion, sanitation, south asia