Skip directly to: content | left navigation | search
  1. NCEH ›
  2. Environmental Health Services ›
  3. Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (GWASH)

Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (GWASH)

    Overview

    Safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene are the three most important conditions for keeping communities healthy. They contribute to the prevention and control of disease, injury, and disability. Thus to reduce the global impact of disease, we need to understand how certain underlying causes lead to disease. Many such underlying causes are often closely linked to water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions. According to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, 2.5 billion persons live without access to improved sanitation, such as a latrine, and nearly 1 billion persons lack sources of safe drinking water (1). Effective disease prevention strategies depend on addressing problems related to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

    Water, sanitation, and hygiene programs align naturally with many of CDC’s Global Health Protection Goals, including

    • Prevention and control of infectious diseases and their global consequences (goal 71);
    • Prevention of global infant and child morbidity and mortality (goal 72); and
    • Support of international and national goals for the acceleration of disease control, and the eventual eradication of certain diseases altogether (goal 78).


    Mission

    CDC’s Environmental Health Services Branch includes a Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene team that works on

    • Evaluating the sustainability of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions;
    • Improving access to safe drinking water through the implementation of Water Safety Plans (WSPs); and
    • Researching the public health impacts of sanitation programs.

    Working with partner organizations, the team performs applied research to evaluate and improve the public health impact and sustainability of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions and provides technical assistance to support the development and implementation of such interventions. In the work of the Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene team, three cross-cutting principles are inherent:

    • Science base: use available public health evidence and science (including social science); and where research and data are insufficient or nonexistent, use applied research to help expand the knowledge base.
    • Partnerships: develop solid partnerships and build capacity in partner organizations to conduct water, sanitation, and hygiene projects independently.
    • Share findings: distribute results through such means as workshops, conferences, reports, and publishing in appropriate peer-reviewed journals.


    Regional Focus

    CDC’s Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene team focuses on communities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), where CDC has experience and strong partnerships. According to the Joint Monitoring Program of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, in 2004 approximately 50 million persons in LAC had no access to an improved drinking water source, and 125 million lacked sanitation services (2, 3).

    In 2006, more than 1 in 4 persons (27%) of the rural population had no access to an improved drinking water source and this same percentage also contended with unimproved sanitation facilities, demonstrating a potentially receptive audience for improved sanitation. Further highlighting the need, 25% of the LAC population often does not use any type of sanitation facility, improved or unimproved (4).

    References

    1. United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals report 2008. Available at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/newsroom/mdg%20reports/MDG_Report_2008_ENGLISH.pdf [accessed 2009 April 17].
    2. World Health Organization and UNICEF. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for water supply and sanitation: Latin America and Caribbean water supply data. Available at: http://www.wssinfo.org/en/238_wat_latino.html [accessed 2009 April 9].
    3. World Health Organization and UNICEF. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for water supply and sanitation: Latin America and Caribbean sanitation data. Available at: http://www.wssinfo.org/en/338_san_latino.html [accessed 2009 April 9].
    4. World Health Organization and UNICEF. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for water supply and sanitation: MDG assessment report. Available at: http://www.wssinfo.org/en/40_MDG2008.html [accessed 2009 April 9].