5 WAYS CLEAN HANDS CAN SAVE LIVEs POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCK-DOWN

08 Sep 5 WAYS CLEAN HANDS CAN SAVE LIVEs POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCK-DOWN

Policy Makers Should Identify Areas of Emergency Expansion

Areas for emergency expansion of hand-washing facilities such as soap stations and alcohol-based hand-rubs should be identified and be given needed attention. As during the Ebola outbreak, West African countries have swiftly and effectively deployed plastic water containers nicknamed “Veronica buckets” across the cities. These are simple and low-cost solutions that provide a safe means of hand-washing and waste disposal despite the absence of running water. To be most effective, such policies should be bolstered with data collection so they can be targeted towards identifying risk areas and key user groups such as health facilities, schools, offices, malls, markets etc.

Provide Clear, Actionable and Consistent Messaging

One of the biggest challenges during the Ebola outbreak was the spread of misinformation and a general lack of trust in public officials leading the response. As a result, in worst hit countries like many Sierra Leon, people delayed taking up preventative behaviors and were also reluctant to report new cases in their communities. The government rectified this by engaging with respected community leaders and supporting research to better understand transmission risks and behaviors. What we have learnt is that the most effective campaigns tend to be those that emphasize a few core messages rather than giving long lists of dos and don’ts. People also tend to pay most attention when the messages are locally-driven. Today, these lessons are being applied to COVID-19, with Nigeria marshaling traditional leaders and celebrities to disseminate factual and culturally-sensitive health messages during the pandemic.

Monitoring and Reducing Water Waste

One important response in the toolkit involves taking conscious steps to monitor and reduce water waste. In Cape Town, an area that is renowned for water scarcity, for example, efforts to improve pipe conditions have helped the city to reduce its water consumption by 50% in just 3 years, following major droughts starting in 2015. Reforms to digitize and frequently update daily administrative data played a key role in supporting the city to identify and fix leaks. Data was also used throughout communications campaigns such as #everydropcounts so that citizens could rally around a collective effort to reduce consumption.

We Have To Recognize That Institutions Matter

Even with quality infrastructure in place, without institutions to incentivize demand, citizens often continue with the informal systems that encompass much of the urban fabric in developing cities. For instance, even though New York opened a revolutionary and hugely expensive new water system called the Croton Aqueduct in 1842, the 1849 cholera outbreak led to more deaths than its predecessor in 1832. Death rates remained high because connection fees were expensive, and just as in sub-Saharan Africa today, poorer individuals chose to avoid the costs. Overcoming this ‘last mile problem’ requires government – including international government – to incentivize connections through subsidies and loans.

Global Community Should Take Responsibility

Finally, given the global burden of disease, the global community has to take responsibility for improving WASH across the developing world. This will be particularly important for rapidly growing developing cities. Of the roughly 30 major global epidemics in world history, the last four happened in the last 30 years, and all were started and rapidly spread in urban areas. With fast-growing cities, the time imperative for infrastructure is absolutely critical, but the up-front costs often delay investments from taking place. Without international support to shoulder the burden of investment, developing cities can end up locked into ineffective systems that are extremely costly to replace at later dates.