Environment &Mental Health &NGOs &WASH &water Bill Brieger | 21 Aug 2024
Haiti: Addressing lead exposure in a low- or middle-income country, a multipronged approach
Mickelder Kercy (mkercy1) posted this entry on lead exposure in Haiti in the class blog of the course, Social and Behavioral Foundations of Primary Health Care at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Graph Data Source: American Heart Association
Recent studies conducted in Haiti revealed that lead exposure increases the risk of hypertension, a major cardiovascular or non-communicable disease. Among children, lead is responsible for several mental and behavioral disorders. Sources of lead exposure includes contaminated drinking water, paint, and batteries.
Laws have been enacted to regulate the prevention and management of exposure to environmental toxicants. These laws mandate institutions to supply safe water, ministry of health to provide adequate care, and companies to sell and safely dispose of their products without harm to population members. Currently, these overarching laws are not being implemented due to political instability, poor governance at the national and municipality levels, and deteriorating socio-economic conditions nationwide.
Several initiatives have been taken that could address lead exposure in Haiti:
- The Ministry of the Environment (MdE) sought the financial assistance of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to improve the drinking water system.
- The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has allocated $4.5 million from the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) to the Ministry of the Environment project to help strengthen policies, regulatory bodies, and organizations in support of the management, supply, and access to clean drinking water (SDG 6) in Haiti starting 2023.
- The Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) plans to budget $7,590,221 for waste management in the capital of Haiti.
Current initiatives are promising stirring up among population members the optimistic view that they could signal a departure from decades of inefficiency and ineffectiveness in government affairs. As recommended,
- The Ministry of the Environment (MdE) and Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) should demonstrate accountability, transparency, and proficiency in current projects.
- The Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) should prioritize waste management according to international standards in the triage and disposal of hazardous wastes such as lead-based batteries.
- The Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) should promote lead exposure prevention in businesses and at the population level, and management across all primary health care facilities.
- Sustainable lead exposure mitigation is a necessity. Based on current human capital and financial resources, the MdE and MSPP could potentially seek out-of-country technical assistance from
- The Lead Exposure Elimination Project to inventory lead-based paints and reformulate them into safer products nationwide, and
The Pure Earth to train employees in the Initial Site Screening (ISS) protocol application to update current maps of lead contaminated sites across all 10 departments in Haiti.
Community &WASH &water Bill Brieger | 19 Aug 2023
WASH and UNICEF in Vietnam: A Tale of New Policies, Successes and Challenges
Kayla Vuong has written about the importance of water and sanitation in the class blog of the JHU course Social and Behavioral Foundations of Primary Health Care. Below are her observations.
“Universal access to clean, safe drinking water and improved sanitation” still remains a challenge in Vietnam, a low-middle income country in Southeast Asia. In order to address this challenge, the Government of Vietnam has asked for support from the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF), who has had 40 years of experience in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
Since its involvement in 2018, UNICEF has helped the Vietnamese government develop national WASH policy and test out policy implementation at four remote provinces of Vietnam (Dien Bien, Gia Lai, Kom Tum and An Giang).
In fact, UNICEF has been collaborating with many Vietnam national partners such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Construction (MOC) to deploy “communication tools on drinking water safety, household water treatment and storage, community-led total sanitation (CLTS), and school-led total sanitation and WASH in schools under the Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) program“.
Additionally, UNICEF has also planned National “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) initiatives which is still pending approval from the Ministry of Construction.
These efforts really paid off as improvement in water safety, sanitation and hygiene has been observed throughout the country. Indeed, thousands of households have benefited from “upgraded WASH facilities and ceramic water filters; 18,000 children now practice healthy WASH behaviors“, as seen in the featured picture of this blog.
However, “disparities in access to hygiene and sanitation remain a social challenge.” Open defecation is still a social norm in the poorest regions of Vietnam such as the Central Highlands and Northern mountainous regions. Only 13% of the population wash their hands with soap after defecating and “the rate is even lower among ethnic minority groups.”
Clearly, there are still more work to be done. Moving forward, in order to sustain WASH, the Government of Vietnam should involve its stakeholders who may be able to support them. For example, key findings in WASH should be shared with all the stakeholders (MAR, MOH, MOE, MOC, community partners, etc.) for program development and policy discussion purposes. The government should also partner up with local ceramic manufacturers to produce low-cost ceramic filters for the public.
Finally, Vietnam should enlist its biggest supporter UNICEF, who has great partnerships and global cooperation networks, to invest more in both direct interventions for improved facilities, local capacities in WASH and policy development to bridge those disparities.