Eddy Perez: The Necessity of Data and Government Involvement in Meeting the New SDGs

Here in the United States, newspaper headlines, radio talk show hosts and television news anchors are screaming about the city of Flint, Michigan and its abject failure to provide basic WASH services to its citizens. To a large degree, the impetus for this outrage and subsequent flurry of promises to address the problem stemmed from data showing high levels of lead in the drinking water and high incidence of lead poisoning in children. It turns out that the water contamination problem started over two years ago and that government officials at both the local and state level were aware of the problems and risks, but largely ignored or even flat out denied the existence of a dangerous threat to public health. Increasingly, political observers attribute this lack of action to the fact that Flint is a poor city with a high percentage of African-American residents.

The newly launched Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for safe water service and safe sanitation services for all citizens, especially the poor and most vulnerable. Clearly, Flint, Michigan is not currently achieving the SDG WASH goals. Fortunately, there is now sufficient concern, and outrage that calls for accountability will hopefully lead to meaningful action, including additional investments to address the water service delivery problems in Flint.

But what about other cities around the world where there is also abject failure by service providers to provide safe urban water and sanitation to its citizens, especially the poorest?  WHO/UNICEF JMP data reveal that in many cities in developing countries, access to safe sanitation is very low citywide and especially so in poor urban slums and informal communities. But unlike in Flint, there is little outrage and even less political accountability and hope of action to address the problem. The city of Accra, Ghana is an example of this—in this city of 1.6 million, only 20% of citizens have access to safe sanitation and the percentage is far lower in the slums where over 75% of families share poorly constructed and unhygienic latrines.¹ The SaniPath tool was developed by the Center for Global Safe WASH (CGSW) at Emory University to assess just these kinds of public health risks, those related to poor sanitation in slums. By taking environmental samples and observing behaviors from households, neighborhoods, schools, public markets, etc. and working with local Ghanaian partners, the CGSW team was able to show that 89% of adults living in the selected slums were exposed to high levels of fecal contamination by eating produce irrigated with fecally contaminated water. They also estimate that children spend 50% of their time on the ground and are exposed to high levels of fecal contamination when eating. The bottom line is in the data—as a result of the lack of safe sanitation services, families living in the slums of Accra were “living in shit” and exposed to high public health risks.

Unlike Flint, Michigan, this evidence of public health risks as a result of the failure of local governments to provide safe sanitation for all has not yet led to outrage and action. Perhaps the words in the WASH SDG goals calling for “safe sanitation for all” has not yet been fully owned by local governments and its citizens. As in Flint, using tools like SaniPath to collect and analyze data and show evidence to highlight the public health risks of not meeting these goals lends strategic input that we hope will lead to action and accountability on the part of government and service providers.

Eddy Perez is Professor of Practice at the Center for Global Safe WASH. Connect with Eddy on Twitter at @eddyperez1209 or contact us here