WASH in Health Facilities Project
in Dowa District
Why Dowa District?
Despite some progress and rigorous technical, financial, and institutional investments provided in support of water projects in Dowa district, the sustainability of WASH project outputs and outcomes remains far from certain particularly in rural healthcare facilities (Mwaluafu, 2015). This poses a great concern to sustain the safety and effectiveness of service delivery in healthcare facilities. Approximately 46% of water points are nonfunctional in the district (UNICEF, 2018).
The distance to the nearest healthcare facility remains one of the serious issues of concern as one in 4 women still gives birth at home (WHO, 2018). Most rural health facilities in Dowa District have nonfunctional WASH systems characterized by unrepaired water tanks and water pumps, blocked plumbing systems, in addition to aged and corroded galvanized pipes. The district has no clear consolidated data of WASH in healthcare facilities. The health sector urgently needs collective action to improve efficiency and sustainability of water supplies in healthcare facilities.
Overview of the Project
Water for Generations will implement a multi-year WASH in Healthcare Facility Advocacy project in Dowa District. The project will advocate for operational improvements and changes in institutional governance system of WASH services. This will be accomplished by focusing on educating, influencing, encouraging, and motivating the communities and healthcare facility staff to champion change taking full responsibilities in the management of local facility WASH systems. The project will be implemented in two phases, First Phase will focus on conducting detailed needs assessment and the Second Phase is to implement recommendations from the needs assessment results.
Step One: Needs Assessment
First, we will need to conduct a detailed baseline assessment to carefully examine key behavioral and community perceptions while gathering appropriate data and information on WASH conditions in rural healthcare facilities in the district. We will identify gaps, focusing on vulnerable facilities for the decision-making process. The assessment will be conducted in all the public healthcare facilities in the district, of which there are 22.
Semi-structured questionnaires and focus group discussions will be used as the methodology to collect the data. The key audience and respondents are local healthcare facility staff, WASH NGOs in the district, the District Health Office representative, community leadership, and health advisory board members.
How you can help!
Water for Generations needs the help of people like you! With your help, we can conduct these assessments and start to build the project from the community, going forward.
The data of the assessment will be analyzed and results will be disseminated during a district stakeholders’ interface meeting. The project will work in partnership with local Rotary Club of Bwaila from Lilongwe whose main role will focus on monitoring, taking part in decision-making processes, and the implementation of the project. The baseline assessment will require approximately one month and the activity is estimated to cost approximately US$2,000.
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