Leveraging Business Approaches to Improve Access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Services in Ethiopia

Urban health is complex and only gets more so as people continue to migrate from rural areas, stretching already scarce resources even further. When drought struck Ethiopia in 2016, agrarian and pastoralist communities were particularly hard hit. Many people migrated to urban areas, which strained the existing social services, including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. The lack of WASH facilities threatened to cause serious public health problems.

JSI's Strengthening Ethiopia's Urban Health Project (SEUHP) conducted a rapid assessment to identify the towns with the highest need for public WASH facilities. In these towns, SEUHP constructed standard public toilets with bathing rooms, renovated health centers' water supply systems, built public water points and pipeline extensions, and constructed hand-dug wells with hand-pumps and communal latrines. This technical brief highlights the interventions implemented as well as the lessons learned in designing and maintaining public WASH facilities. JSI/SEUHP. 2018.