Community Development Unit of Public Health Engineering Department (PHED)launched the largest sanitation drive to provide toilets for rural population of Muzaffargarh under its " Pakistan's viewpoint on complete sanitation and Health. With the help of volunteers, PHED 's CDU motivated the people of Union Council Jagatpur and Kharak to make these areas " human waste free". Another 24 volunteers were trained under three-day training programme Community Development officer Maqbool Ahmed and Farhat Jehangir of Water aid Pakistan told that almost half of Pakistan's 220 million people defecate in the open - a practice that puts them at risk from cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid fever.Despite Pakistan's launch of the total Sanitation Campaign over a decade ago, which built thousands of latrines aimed at improving sanitation in rural areas, only a quarter of Pakistan's rural population has access to toilets. And those who do often decline to use them, researchers found.The fundamental problem is that this programme doesn't put enough resources to behaviour change.
It is harder to change behaviour than to build latrines," a study revealed.Although access to toilets in villages in Pakistan's Muzaffargarh district state increased from 9 to 63 percent during the course of the study, the researchers found no evidence that the intervention improved villagers' health.The reason, said an activist, was not only an insufficient number of toilets available, but also people's reluctance to use them, lack of hand washing practices, and contact with faeces from children and animals."If a family boils its drinking water it's probably protecting itself from pathogens that are transmitted through water. If a family sleeps under a bed net it might protect itself from malaria."But in sanitation it's a community issue and the fact that you have a latrine and you use a latrine doesn't mean that you're going to be protected, because there's still a lot of potential sources of exposure in your community,"Another social activist said.NGOs need to make sure that people actually use them in order to succeed in its sanitation drive and in improving health, he said.
