Tiger worms: the ingenious solution to sanitation in refugee camps. News The Essential Daily Briefing, December 30, 2016.
The tiger worms can turn human waste into useful fertiliser (Photo: Oxfam)
A team of British charity workers have come up with a simple, cheap and downright ingenious solution to the problem of providing safe sanitation to some of the world’s most crowded refugee camps – and it involves hundreds of bucketfuls of worms.
Engineers working for Oxfam have created what they have dubbed the “tiger toilet”: a no-frills latrine which uses composting worms to convert human waste into useful fertiliser.
The invention carries the added benefit of reducing the risk of disease.
The toilets, so named because of the striped tiger worms (Eisenia fetida) upon which they rely, were first trialled by a team working in Liberia in 2013.
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Impact of WASH interventions during disease outbreaks in humanitarian emergencies: A systematic review protocol, 2016. Authors: Yates, Travis, Vijcic, Jelena Joseph, Myriam Leandre, Lantagne, Daniele
The purpose of this document is to clearly describe the proposed research questions and methodology for a systematic review on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions in disease outbreaks. The systematic review has a singular overarching objective in assessing the impact of emergency hygiene interventions.
The primary research question will be answered through four secondary objectives that further evaluate: a) use of service and disease reduction; b) positive intervention characteristics; c) cost-effectiveness; and d) non-health related factors of emergency WASH interventions in disease outbreaks.
This review is funded through the Humanitarian Evidence Programme, a UK Aid-funded partnership between Oxfam and Feinstein International Center (FIC) at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University. The Humanitarian Evidence Programme aims to synthesize evidence in the humanitarian sector and communicate the findings to stakeholders, with the ultimate goal of improving humanitarian policy and practice.
Oxfam America – International call for Proposals to design and develop an innovative sanitation technology system for flood and flood-prone areas by firms or companies.
Background – Oxfam America is an international NGO, and member of the Oxfam International confederation which operates in more than 90 countries throughout the world working on both development and humanitarian projects. It is one of the leading humanitarian organizations in the field of water, sanitation and public health.
OXFAM America has recently received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the project entitled “Improving sanitation conditions for the most vulnerable households in the flooded and flood-prone areas of Pikine and Guediawaye, Dakar, Senegal“.
The call for tenders is initiated on December 16th ,2013 for a 45 day term. Therefore, the deadline for submitting proposals is January 30th , 2014 at 12.00.
Source: Oxfam Policy and Practice Blog, Aug 13, 2012, by Elizabeth Lamond, HSP Public Health Engineer Coordinator
Oxfam’s Cholera Outbreak Guidelines were developed as an internal resource, but today we are sharing them externally in order to seek input from the international humanitarian community. We hope that this feedback will inform later editions in order to develop a powerful resource for anyone looking to prepare for, prevent and control a cholera outbreak. Here, one of the authors of the Guideline, Bibi Lamond, explains more.
I have been responsible for implementing and coordinating cholera outbreak programmes since 2006. In my work I have found that, although there are numerous documents and books on medical intervention for cholera control, there are no comprehensive water, sanitation and hygiene promotion (WASH) guidelines.
Oxfam’s new publication, the Cholera Outbreak Guidelines aims to meet this need and could set standards for other emergency WASH actors.
The content of the Guidelines has evolved from firsthand field experience in Oxfam’s emergency cholera programmes in Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. It has also drawn on information from other NGOs, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, renowned for their cholera work in the field.
Factors determining the effectiveness of Oxfam’s public health promotion approach in Haiti, 2012.
Nadja Contzen, Hans-Joachim Mosler. Eawag.
In response to the devastating Earthquake of January 12th 2010 and the cholera outbreak of October of that same year Oxfam Great Britain, Oxfam Quebec and Intermón Oxfam conducted public health promotion and cholera response in Haiti. Different promotion activities were applied which aimed at changing hygiene behavior by changing perceptions and beliefs about healthy behaviors amongst people affected by crisis.
In February 2011 four Oxfam affiliates in Haiti in partnership with a team of behavior change researchers from Eawag launched the present research project to do an in-depth evaluation of the promotional activities that had been conducted with the goal of further improving the WASH situation for people in Haiti and worldwide by understanding how to make hygiene promotion more effective. The main focus of the research project was around the question which specific promotion activities were strongly associated with perceptions and beliefs about handwashing with soap and were thus capable of changing handwashing behavior at key times.
OXFAM – Hygiene promotion: determining what works, 2012. Humanitarian field studies | Cholera response in Haiti
When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, followed by a cholera epidemic that broke out in October of that year, Oxfam rushed assistance—clean water, sanitation, and hygiene materials and information—to hard-hit areas to protect public health.
Hygiene promotion is arguably the most important intervention in a cholera epidemic: the route of cholera transmission is fecal-oral, and contaminated hands are often the principal vector. So Oxfam engages in a wide range of hygiene-promotion activities to encourage washing hands—specifically, washing hands with soap at key moments, such as before eating and after defecation.
But which of our interventions have been the most effective, and why? Is it more important to put resources into hygiene-themed theater productions or radio call-in shows? There is little hard evidence to suggest that—in Haiti or in emergencies anywhere—one hygiene-promotion activity works better than another. But lives, not to mention valuable resources, may depend on the answer, so in the spring of 2011, Oxfam engaged Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, to study the effectiveness of our hygiene-promotion activities in Haiti.