Water And Sanitation Essay

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Asides air, water is the most important resource to man. Water availability and proper sanitation are essential to protect children’s health and their ability to learn at school. There is an interesting close relationship between water supply and sanitation. Any school that requires proper sanitation must have stable source of water. In this sense, one may regard water sources (like taps and wells) as examples of sanitation facilities. This can be agreed with the definition of sanitation by WHO, where it refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. Water availability is not a facility rather the structures (taps, wells e.t.c) that allows the availability and accessibility of this resource can be referred to as facilities of sanitation. These facilities are essential for proper sanitation in any secondary school. The provision of these facilities ensure accessibility of water and hence quality sanitation. This therefore means that for proper disposal of human urine and faeces there must be available and accessible water. This simple fact defines the strong relationship between water and sanitation.
The concept of distance decay as outlines by Getis et al, 2008 and location theory as pointe out by Alfred Weber, 1929 can be used to explain the intricate relationship between water and sanitation.

DISTANCE – DECAY CONCEPT
Distance Decay is experimental decline of an activity, function, or amount of interaction with increasing distance from the point of origin (Getis et al 1998). It explains the fact that there is a greater intensity (greater spatial interaction) in the use of facilities near the school area especially the distance between the water source and the school buildin...

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...ties (especially those that makes water available) and hygiene. Water is intimately linked with quality sanitation, proper education and gender equality. Girls who have to spend time gathering water for the family use are likely not to be in school so also, where schools have proper sanitation, attendance for girls is higher. Lack of appropriately private and sanitary facilities has a greater impact on girls than boys, which determines whether they ever attend and also influence how long they stay in school, that girls are more likely to enrol in schools –and stay enrolled – when they have a measure of protection and respect.
Understanding the intricate relationship between water and sanitation using the concept of distance decay and location theory and then applying these understanding will increase the number of girls in schools especially in Sub-Saharan Africa

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