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Water, Sanitation & Hygiene in Emergencies

Overview

Some of the most common needs of affected communities in any disaster - whether in a natural or conflict environment - is access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and hygiene. The associated risks to health in an emergency are due to lack of safe drinking water and disease transmission caused by poor sanitation and hygiene practices. Appropriate interventions improving water, sanitation and hygiene practice have a marked improvement on reducing disease transmission, alleviating the suffering of the community and saving lives.

Aims & objectives

The purpose of the training is to introduce participants to concepts of public health engineering / environmental health in emergencies and to familiaris e them with standard equipment applied in the field. By the end of the course, participants should be able to understand:

the links between water, sanitation and health
the nature of, and the threats posed by, environmental diseases
the importance and main elements of hygiene-promotion
the complexity in delivering safe water and sanitation in an emergency
the standard equipment used in the field for emergencyWASH response
the different response mechanism to WASH in emergencies of major humanitarian agencies such as the IFRC, Oxfam, MSF and UN.

Audience

This course is an ideal introduction to public health engineering in emergencies for :

humanitarian workers of all disciplines, levels and experience;
engineers whose technical skills are more oriented toward large-scale urban systems, who want to adapt their skills to humanitarian emergencies work;
anyone who has already worked in humanitarian relief and wants to improve or learn new public health engineering skills.