Arinita Maskey Shrestha's response to Thursday's summary
Orlando Hernandez - Friday 26 January 2007Thank you for very comprehensive and important indicators that you provided in your report. Sorry I have been bit late in the conference but I am hopeful that some of the points that I have put below is valid for us to make it a better guideline for measuring HTWS implementation.
I have tried to look into each of the indicators that you have provided and find that some other indicators needs to be added to see the actual progress of the implementation and its impact in the community.
I was very glad to see in Orlando's paper that focuses on the spare parts and its availability. This is one of the most important components of the successful implementation as the availability and knowledge to use it in case of damage, supports our concern on short or long term use, which we
also have put as an indicator and which Susan has proposed
Aside from that, certain agent/institution or organization in community should be responsible for providing right information to the people when they install it or whenever they have certain problems using it. Thus indicator such as *contact agent or individual/center* in such case could
also help in sustainability. Ultimately the community is the one who uses the HTWS and who could sustain our implementation activities. If they are not well equipped, once the project is over the use of HWTS will also stop, which is well experienced globally.
As for the behavior outcome one of the key indicators that the product would be sustainable is the perceived benefit by the households especially on the health improvement. Though most may or may not recall reduction or increase
of waterborne disease and it may also depend on sanitary condition of the households, the *Perceived Benefit* would help support the Behavioral Outcomes of the implementation. Benefits could be: 1) monetary or 2)
reduction of commonly experienced diseases.
One of the most important part on the use of household treatment is *use of the treated water by all household members*, which does not usually happen in community. The treated water may end up being used by sick or only by
ones who got the orientation thus leaving vulnerable members such as children, women on elders. Thus an indicator that spell out the that all family drinking the treated water is necessary to assume that the household is using safe water not because they were taught but they learned and changed their behavior to safeguard their family.
As for the mark penetration, I would suggest that the denominator be *total households* not total population as this will give a totally different result simply because the HWTS goes to households not to individuals. If population is counted then there will 5 set of HWTS options in a house of 5.
I fully agree with Julia and Mark's concern on the quality aspects. Compared to water quantity water quality is left behind when it is the main source that causes various waterborne diseases. This also bring in the issue of
easy water quality testing at communities and for which I would definitely wait for Mark's progress in the test kit. I hope this would be affordable to target communities as well.
As for *Storage vs treatment*, I would like to share my recent experience on this matter when I was in field observing pre-testing of some of the IEC and training materials for HWTS project in Nepal. Even among the gathering of educated groups, I realized that people understand that *safe storage means safe water* while it may not be true in most of the cases. This is the
impact of previous promotional activities by many organizations when safe storage was highlighted but it did not mention about treatment. Thus I feel that the three components that is being mentioned: transport, treatment and storage should go together. It sounds complicated while going to the ground with 3 messages but we need to sort out how this be could easily understand by the target communities, this is the challenge.
Orlando has put some of the key issues on Thursday's summary which are very important to me as part of the HWTS promotion. I would be interested to see response on this also rather bringing my own opinions first. However, I do
want to put one issue that comes along the concern of storage and treatment. It is true that HH may not have an idea of how much water they get and consume separately because the problem lies in separating water for drinking
which is not even practiced in most cases. Thus I bring the issue of *separating water for drinking water* from the bulk water being used by households.
Regarding the indicator on treatment and storage, I would suggest we should have a supporting indicator on storage so we cover both treatment and storage and not confuse among the two. One of the key message that needs to given to the community is that "*safe storage does not mean safe
water"*together with *" clean water does not mean safe* water"
I am much in a hurry for my travel arrangement to attend the HWTS conference in Kenya and am sure these issues would come there also. Thank you for a very conprehensive work you have put and I am hopeful that this will help
us, the country level implementers in providing good results of the work we have done. Thank you again
Arinita M Shrestha
Country Coordinator
AED/HIP
Technical Assitance
UNICEF- POU Project, Nepal