Community participation in integrated water, sanitation & hygiene (WASH) programs in supply of safe water in Trans Nzioa, Kenya

Abstract

37% of Developing world’s population lack access to clean water; 2.5 billion people lack improved basic sanitation and hygiene facilities, over 780 million people still use unsafe drinking water. Trans Nzioa County, in Kenya faces considerable challenges in reaching water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and objectives of primary prevention. The County has four Divisions: (Bondeni, Suwerwa, Kaplamai and Waitaluk), blended with inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, couple with poor hygiene practices that, kill and sicken vulnerable groups being women and under fives, who spend 4–5 times per day fetching for water and are overwhelmed with burden of water related diseases. It was this reasons in the County that, Government of Kenya GOK comes in collaboration with Development partners (WHO, UNICEF, USAID and UN Habitat) to form integrated water resource management programmes, to supply safe and clean water to its community household in order to alleviate water- related diseases. Cross-sectional design, using mixed data collection procedure was conducted. Sample sizes of 297 respondents participated. Purposive, proportional sampling design, from sampling frames of households in each Division was utilized. Structured questionnaire, Key Informant Interviews (KII) guides, Focus Group Discussion, (FGD) guides were used, Quantitative, data was statistically analyzed by MS excel and SPSS version 16, to measure central tendency, and dispersion. Qualitative data, themes and sub-themes were discussed to saturation. Results showed secondary attained households are critical for efficiency implementation of safe and clean water supply compared to primary attained households, male participation in water issues was minimal (41%). Accessibility to safe water from one source, by majority residents,’ remains low (30 %). Hand washing after visiting latrine still low (43%). However majority of households (88%) utilized latrines. Need for more grants and wel-wishers for Public Private Provision programmes in water resource management, policy to increase male involvement in community participation in integrated Water, Sanitation and Hygiene WASH programmes in Trans Nzioa County is timely required.