Health Committee Training

During November, I trained my Health Committee on Sanitation issues.  I found 5 community members who wanted to participate on the Committee, who will relay what we learned to the community, and start a pilot project.  I’ve been living in Alto Playón for a little over a year now, and I’m finally at the point where I have reliable people to work with me.   We started a group in December 2010, but it completely failed.  Nobody would show up to meetings, and weren’t really interested in working together.  I was able to find the right people by doing a Bucket Latrine presentation and Environmental Health Workshops.

The greatest part is that my host sister, Irasema Guainora, asked to join the committee the morning that we started the training.  She is really interested in composting latrines and I’m excited to have a woman on the committee.

WASH Index

I started off by teaching them about the WASH Index, which is a way to appraise the current Water and Sanitation situation.  After using the matrix to analyze the community, it was evident to the Committee that there was a lot of work to be done.  I also hope that this self-analysis will serve to have them view their community in a different way.  It also serves as a way to track the progress of the Sanitation situation in the community.

	MUCHO TRABAJO	HAY TRABAJO	NO TRABAJO	Fecha:	Fecha:	Fecha:
LETRINAS	No hay letrinas;  La gente usan el monte o el rio	Algunos tienen letrinas.  Son mantenidas mas o menos.	Todo de la comunidad tienen letrinas.  Son mantenidas buenas.
DRENAJE	No hay sistemas de drenaje.  Mucha agua estancada con cria de mosquitos.	Algunos tienen un sistema de drenaje.  Hay varios lugares con agua estancada.	Todos tienen sistemas de drenaje.  No hay agua estancada.
RESIDUOS SOLIDOS	No hay sistema de mantener residuos solidos.  Hay mucha basura en las calles.	Un sistema de mantener residuos solidos ha empezado.  Hay poquita basura en las calles.	La sistema de mantener residuos solidos esta funcionando.  No hay basura en la calle.
LAVA MANOS	No hay Tippy-Taps.	Algunos tienen y usan Tippy-Taps con jabon.	Todos tienen y usan Tippy-Taps con jabon.

Sanitation Topics

The training was based on 4 sanitation topics:

Drainage Systems

Solid Waste

Latrines

Hand Washing

For Drainage Systems, I spoke about making soak pits, which is essentially digging a hole in the ground and filling it with sand and medium sized rocks.  Having a soak pit below the washing area can remove standing water, which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes and smells awful. Although the ground water table is high in our community, the soak pit I have is working well.

Since Alto Playón is rural, the community needs to manage their own Solid Waste.  I first educated them on Reducing their trash and then Reusing their trash via composting and/or making useful things.  With all the rest of their waste, I introduced making an Incinerator out of metal tanks.  This way people can deposit their trash there, burn it in a single, high temperature location, and then bury the ash.  Burning trash is NOT an environmentally friendly option.  However, in our situation it will keep the community clean and reduce disease transmission via mosquitoes.

We then talked about Latrines.  I first covered disease transmission and how open defecation in the jungle and in the river is harmful to health.  Everyone on the Health Committee was essentially there because they are interested in Composting Latrines, and all of the previous promotion had paid off.

Finally, we covered the importance of Hand Washing, after using the bathroom, before eating, before preparing food, and the hands of the kids.  I introduced a Tippy-Tap which is a hanging gallon of water which allows them to wash their hands.

We covered each of the 4 topics in depth and I gave them a Pre-Test and a Post-Test.  They were most interested in working on Composting Latrines and we started to develop a Work Plan and a project to present to the community.