Summary Week 4

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Del curso dictado por École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Introduction to Public Health Engineering in Humanitarian Contexts

56 calificaciones

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Introduction to Public Health Engineering in Humanitarian Contexts

56 calificaciones

The world is facing unprecedented humanitarian needs. Today’s humanitarian crisis tend to be greater in number, often in urban settings, longer in duration and broader in regional impact. They generate human sufferings on a greater scale, disrupt essential services, such as water supply or sanitation and put health of large population at risk. Engineers and technical specialists in water, sanitation, energy, environment, and in other related fields play a vital role to respond to these challenges and growing needs. In the humanitarian sector, they are called the public health engineers and today they are increasingly needed! Why public health engineering matters so much in humanitarian crises? And how its related activities are carrying out in such complex environment? This is what this MOOC is all about! The EPFL, EAWAG-SANDEC and ICRC have decided to partner to guide you through this introduction to the fascinating field of public health engineering in humanitarian contexts.

De la lección

Sanitation

The fourth week does a review of sanitation technologies and excreta management. Case studies illustrate some challenges and practices in humanitarian sector.

Summary Week 44:58

Conoce a los instructores

Christoph Lüthi
Dr.
Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development / Eawag
Javier Cordoba

Water & Habitat Unit / ICRC

Hello there and welcome to the summary video of week 4 on sanitation.

I hope you enjoyed the lectures

and learned a lot over the course of this week.

So let's just quickly go through the main learnings

and key takeaway messages of this week.

So this week, we looked at sanitation.

We learned the definition of sanitation;

what a sanitation system is;

and its different elements.

We explored sanitation product terminology and functional groups

then we moved to excreta management in humanitarian crisis

where we presented an example of how sanitation system

can be developed over the course of humanitarian response,

starting from the acute phase of response where Sphere minimal standards apply

to rehabilitation of existing infrastructure in the recovery period.

Finally, we looked at which selection criteria need to be considered

for choosing the best fit sanitation service

and a technology that can be best used for the task.

The importance of sanitation and the effect of the lack of it

were shown very impressively in the case study from Gaza.

There, a wastewater treatment plant was implemented

in order to treat sewage.

This case study also shows how humanitarian work

in the field of sanitation,

often goes beyond the construction of on-site emergency latrines.

This graph depicts the five different functional groups

that make a sanitation system,

in order to safely use a toilet,

collect, store, convey, treat and use or dispose each sanitation product.

A sanitation system is always built using technologies

from these five different functional groups.

But remember,

not every system requires a technology from each functional group.

This systematic thinking can help us to organise and plan

the most appropriate system for a given context.

During an acute humanitarian crisis,

it is not always possible to implement

a complete sanitation system from the beginning.

We learned about the Sphere minimal standards

that help us to understand the minimum requirements of excreta management

during an acute humanitarian crisis.

The first goal is to create an environment free from human faeces

in order to prevent the spread of fecal oral diseases

such as diarrhea, typhus, and cholera.

The second goal is to provide toilet facilities

in order for all affected people to have adequate,

appropriate and acceptable toilets that are safe and secure to use.

The case study from Liberia presented an example of safe containment of excreta

with liquid waste that is contaminated with Ebola.

There, we also saw that safe sanitation goes beyond toilets

and that safe conveyance and treatment are crucial.

The video also displayed the key importance of community involvement

and awareness raising during such an intervention.

As there is no one-size-fits-all solution to sanitation

and there is a high variability of different contexts,

we looked at the criteria that influenced the selection

of the most appropriate sanitation system for a given context.

For this, we need to consider the properties of the natural,

built and enabling environments

in order to make a well-informed choice.

In the second part of the week,

we got to know different suitable sanitation technologies

for an acute humanitarian response

as well as collection, storage and treatment technologies.

We saw how they work;

and what are their advantages and disadvantages are.

If you want to learn more about different sanitation technologies,

I would recommend our other EAWAG online course on sanitation planning

as well as reading the compendium of sanitation systems and technologies

and other literature by other institutions.

You will find these links on the course page.

One example of the technology in the field

was seen in the case study of prisons in Rwanda.

There, biogas toilets were implemented;

and the gas from the biogas toilets is used for cooking in the prison.

If you want to learn more about sanitation in humanitarian crisis,

please check out the literature mentioned on the course page.

I hope you learned a lot this week

and are excited to test a new knowledge in your working environment.

Let's provide improved sanitation

like done in the picture behind me, in Ivory Coast.

So if you have any questions or feedbacks,

if you want to let us know about something,

please get back to us on the forum

and let us know your thoughts.

Thank you very much for your attention during this week;

and I hope to see you again.

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