Kathmandu, Mar. 22:A National Sanitation Campaign was launched here today with the release of Nepal State of Sanitation Report 1999/2000 on the occasion of World Water Day.
The report chronicles the sanitation efforts so far, the current situation, potential impacts of improved sanitation and makes a number of recommendations.
Eighty per cent of the diseases like diarrhoea, round worm, typhoid, cholera, and malnutrition and ocular diseases in Nepal are due to lack of sanitation, according to the report that was prepared by Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) Environmental Sanitation Section (ESS) and UNICEF.
The report says that 0.15 billion rupees was spent annually on sanitation during the Eighth Plan but the estimated annual economic loss due to poor sanitation during the period was about 10 billion rupees.
“Owing to contaminated water, every year 28 thousand children die of gastro-intestinal diseases in Nepal. About one million children and one million adults also suffer from such diseases,” says the report.
Despite the bleak picture of public health due to lack of proper sanitation system, the government failed to set aside any budget for sanitation during the current Ninth Plan, the report says.
The report has recommended that apart from the water supply projects the authority should adopt a broad-based sanitation strategy using development programmes at the local level and the media, and launch campaign to mobilise the large number of stakeholders emphasising benefits of sanitation facilities.
It has also emphasised the involvement of private sector in creating public awareness in rural areas through various sanitation-related programmes.
Releasing the report at the National Meeting of World Water Day, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Chitralekha Yadav said the people’s problems could be best resolved only if policies were formed to deal with their day-to-day problems.
“We can fulfil our responsibility toward the people only if can identify their problems and sincerely strive to resolve them,” she said at the programme jointly organised by DWSS, World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF and Public Health Engineers’ Society Nepal.
Yadav stressed the need to the make programmes on drinking water, health and sanitation successful in rural areas and she said public awareness programmes were equally necessary along side.
From the chair, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Physical Planning Arun Kumar Ranjitkar said the government would implement programmes to ensure potable water for all by the end of the current Ninth Five-Year Plan.
WHO representative Dr Klaus Wagner said direct participation of the government and private sector was needed to effectively implement potable drinking water and sanitation programmes.
UNICEF representative McNab Stibert said the government should bear in mind the hardship facing children and women in various parts of the country while formulating its policies on drinking water.
Chairman of the village development committee national federation Nepal, Mahinu Limbu informed the meeting that the federation was going to launch awareness-oriented programme on sanitation in all the villages in four phases.
Deputy Director General of Department of Drinking Water and Sewerage Gautam Prasad Shrestha, Deputy Director General Iswar Man Tamrakar, Chairman of National Action Committee on Sanitation Nawal Kishore Mishra shed light on drinking water and sanitation problems and the programme to be launched by private sector in the future.