IDS SANITATION RESEARCH
Who is being left behind in Swachh Bharat Mission? How do we include them? Immersive research report by WaterAid India with Institute of Development Studies, gives insight into who is missed in sanitation programming in areas of India and how to include them. 
‘More or less: A rapid review of ‘water for toilets’ in rural India’, examines both technical and behavioural aspects surrounding water collection, management and consumption related to toilet use in rural India. It provides recommendations for steps forward.
Retrofitting of toilets is a complex and challenging stream of work and is included as one of the main components of Open Defecation Free-Sustainability (ODF-S) plans under Swachh Bharat Mission- Gramin (SBM-G). This rapid topic review ‘Retrofitting: The Next Step for the Swachh Bharat Mission?’ aims to provide recent evidence and insights into the scale and nature of the challenges of retrofitting.
PEER RESEARCH PROPOSALS
PEER Cycle 9 Call for Proposals Now Open – On behalf of PEER’s sponsors at USAID, the National Academies are happy to announce that this year’s cycle of PEER is now open and accepting proposals. There are several country-specific focus areas: urban WASH and transboundary water in Afghanistan, clean energy in Bangladesh, multiple research sectors in Tunisia, and bioremediation of dioxins and furans in Vietnam.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
School-based, blacklight handwashing program can improve handwashing quality and knowledge among pre-school aged children. Evaluation and Program Planning, February 2020. Authors: Deirdre Dingman, Jingwei Wub, Heather M.Murphy – Puzzles and structured handwashing observations can be used as handwashing evaluation tools. Use of a black light technology as an educational tool can help to improve handwashing quality among pre-school aged children.
Impact of the “BALatrine” Intervention on Soil-Transmitted Helminth Infections in Central Java, Indonesia: A Pilot Study. Trop. Med. Infect. Dis., Dec 2019. We tested a low-cost, locally designed and constructed all-weather latrine (the “BALatrine”), together with community education promoting appropriate hygiene-related behaviour, to determine whether this integrated intervention effectively controlled soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections.
Relationship of sanitation, water boiling, and mosquito nets to health biomarkers in a rural subsistence population. Am Jnl Human Biology, Dec 2019. This suggests that relatively low cost and low maintenance public health interventions may wish to focus on latrine use, as there is unmet need and potential health benefits for those who use latrines. Additionally, while the cost is higher, public health organizations aimed at improving sanitation may be able to use minimally invasive field‐collected biomarkers as a diagnostic to objectively test the efficacy of interventions with greater specificity than anthropometric measurements.
Citywide Inclusive Sanitation through Scheduled Desludging Services: Emerging Experience from India. Front. Environ. Sci., 27 November 2019. This paper first reviews the need for regular desludging of septic tanks. It then outlines the emerging experience of design and implementation of scheduled desludging for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable sanitation to achieve social and environmental benefits in two Indian cities. In these cities, a performance-linked annuity payment framework is used to engage a private desludging enterprise. Payment is met through a sanitation tax and transfer from the general property taxes.
VIDEOS
Kenya RAPID video shows impact in year 4. MWA, Dec 2019. See this above video for an update on Kenya RAPID as it nears its fifth and final year of implementation.
BLOG POSTS/NEWS ARTICLES
Water, Sanitation Can Systematically Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance in India. The Wire, Dec 2019. Limited access to water, sanitation and waste management services, increases risk of infections and leads to greater dependence on antibiotics which contributes to AMR.
By, for, and of the People: How Citizen Science Enhances Water Security. New Security Beat, Dec 2019. This article is part of ECSP’s Water Security for a Resilient World series, a partnership with USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership and Winrock International to share stories about global water security.
