Penny Streather
LUANDA, Jun 17 2008 (IPS) – A survey of Angolan households has revealed less than half of caregivers always treat water with a reliable method before giving it to children. And one third of those interviewed by Population Services International (PSI) believes water is blessed by God and does not need to be sterilised before use.
Run-off from places like the Sao Paulo Market in Luanda contaminates the water supplied to the city s poor neighbourhoods. Credit: Ferdinando Casagrande/IPS
The study, carried out in June 2007, but only published officially this month, looked in detail at the motivators for treating water in Angola and opportunities and abilities which contributed to this behaviour. More than 1,650 households with children under five in the capital of Luanda without piped water in their homes took part in the PSI questionnaire.
Certainly the need for this study can be seen in some of its results: more than a quarter of children in the surveyed households had experienced diarrhoea (usually caused by water-borne bacteria) in the 15 days before completing the questionnaire and 7 percent of respondents reported a case of cholera in their household in the last 2 years.
The results have since been used to formulate a targeted marketing and educational strategy. The researchers noted that knowledge about safe water, water treatment and causes of diarrhoea and cholera was very high.
For example, 87 percent of respondents knew clean-looking water might not be safe to drink, 94 percent knew treating water with chlorine makes it safe to drink, 95 percent knew that not washing hands before eating causes diarrhoea and 99 percent knew that drinking contaminated water causes cholera.
But despite this high knowledge level attributable to intensive government media and house-to-house communications since the start of a cholera outbreak in Luanda in February 2006 just 12 percent of those quizzed said they consistently practise the eight key water treatment and hand-washing behaviours, things like washing hands before eating and after using the toilet.
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Following the 2006 outbreak, aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) launched a stinging attack on the state of sanitation in Angola and said the epidemic was a disaster waiting to happen. It said there were few provisions to treat the devastating outbreak and government response was slow.
In its report, the charity noted how trucks carrying water from river collection points to communal cisterns were failing to get their cargo chlorinated because the queues were too long. During the month of April, MSF found only 10 percent of the trucks leaving the Kifangondo collection point, near the Bengo River which was visibly contaminated and its water unfit for human consumption were chlorinated.
As well as this poor practice by the truck drivers, the rains were washing contaminated water from residential areas back into the rivers perpetuating the problem and piles of uncollected rubbish and human waste only added to the problem.
Thousands of people died in the 2006 cholera outbreak, but two years on, many lessons have been learnt and the Ministry of Health (MINSA) and municipal governments are working hard to improve sanitation and access to drinking water.
Last month the Government announced 100,000 residents in the Luandan barrios of Patrice Lumumba, Kinanga and Ilha do Cabo, now had access to drinking water via lorry deliveries to communal cisterns. It also said it had increased the numbers of communal fountains and was working to repair worn-out storage facilities to prevent contamination.
PSI is working in partnership with MINSA on its Safe Water Programme which is all about distributing a water treatment product called Certeza (Portuguese for certainty ) to households in cholera-risk areas.
Certeza is manufactured in Angola but the same product has already been successfully marketed in a number of other countries around the world. Each bottle costs 50 Kwanzas and will treat 1000 litres of water, or one month s supply of safe water for a family of six. This equates to about 12 kwanzas a week, or 2 US cents a day.
PSI sells Certeza to wholesalers and retailers at the cost of production and therefore the cost recovered from each bottle of Certeza sold can be used to produce another bottle, therefore increasing the sustainability of this project.
PSI believes it will become a product of choice for people in Angola because it does not have the strong bleach taste other treatment products can have. Additionally, because it is sold in shops, it is available people who haven t benefited from free distribution but might still be exposed to contaminated water.
Although Certeza is a socially-marketed product, its distribution is very much in conjunction with the Angolan Government.
A spokesman for PSI said: Government support has been instrumental to ensure that the relevant arms of the Ministry of Health and Water are involved in the program which enables broad acceptance of the promoted behaviours as well as immediate response to concerns and emergency situations.
PSI s Safe Water Programme is supported by ExxonMobil, UNICEF, and USAID.
To accompany the agency s distribution road shows and education days, it has also created a poster advertisement.
A mother pictured with her child is asked, Do you have clean water?
She replies, in Portuguese, Tenho Certeza. ( I am sure )