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COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on handwashing as an inexpensive, widely applicable response measure. In consequence, most governments have taken action to promote access to water and sanitation services for all. This paper documents an overview of initiatives and interventions that countrie...

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Autores principales: Giné-Garriga, Ricard, Delepiere, Antoine, Ward, Robin, Alvarez-Sala, Jorge, Alvarez-Murillo, Isabel, Mariezcurrena, Virginia, Sandberg, Henning Göransson, Saikia, Panchali, Avello, Pilar, Thakar, Kanika, Ibrahim, Esmaeil, Nouvellon, Alban, El Hattab, Omar, Hutton, Guy, Jiménez, Alejandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8254381/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34243010
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148789
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author Giné-Garriga, Ricard
Delepiere, Antoine
Ward, Robin
Alvarez-Sala, Jorge
Alvarez-Murillo, Isabel
Mariezcurrena, Virginia
Sandberg, Henning Göransson
Saikia, Panchali
Avello, Pilar
Thakar, Kanika
Ibrahim, Esmaeil
Nouvellon, Alban
El Hattab, Omar
Hutton, Guy
Jiménez, Alejandro
author_facet Giné-Garriga, Ricard
Delepiere, Antoine
Ward, Robin
Alvarez-Sala, Jorge
Alvarez-Murillo, Isabel
Mariezcurrena, Virginia
Sandberg, Henning Göransson
Saikia, Panchali
Avello, Pilar
Thakar, Kanika
Ibrahim, Esmaeil
Nouvellon, Alban
El Hattab, Omar
Hutton, Guy
Jiménez, Alejandro
author_sort Giné-Garriga, Ricard
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on handwashing as an inexpensive, widely applicable response measure. In consequence, most governments have taken action to promote access to water and sanitation services for all. This paper documents an overview of initiatives and interventions that countries have implemented during the first months of the COVID-19 response. Initiatives have been identified across 84 countries worldwide, and categorized into those that aimed at securing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for all, and those that sought to provide technical and financial support to service providers. The pandemic has not hit countries in the same way. Accordingly, results show disparities in the response between and within regions, with the level of activity found in the countries varying largely in terms of ambition and scope. Hygiene promotion and infection prevention and control (IPC) has been widely adopted – at least one response measure found in 94% of mapped countries -, although not always matched in ambition with the assured availability of soap, water, and handwashing facilities. Support to vulnerable households to promote basic access to WASH services at scale was weak (38% of countries) or implemented locally (25%), and requiring additional focus, particularly in rural areas and small towns. In addition, parallel support needs to be extended to service providers or to households themselves in the form of cash transfers, in order to ensure the financial viability and the continuity of services. All lessons learned distilled from the pandemic should help strengthen the enabling environment for more resilient services in future emergencies. Areas for focus could include developing specific pandemic response strategies and plans; strengthening coordination; and establishing emergency financial support mechanisms for water operators, for example. Overall, findings presented herein contribute to enhance current and future pandemics prevention, mitigation, and recovery.
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spelling pubmed-82543812021-07-06 COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries Giné-Garriga, Ricard Delepiere, Antoine Ward, Robin Alvarez-Sala, Jorge Alvarez-Murillo, Isabel Mariezcurrena, Virginia Sandberg, Henning Göransson Saikia, Panchali Avello, Pilar Thakar, Kanika Ibrahim, Esmaeil Nouvellon, Alban El Hattab, Omar Hutton, Guy Jiménez, Alejandro Sci Total Environ Article The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on handwashing as an inexpensive, widely applicable response measure. In consequence, most governments have taken action to promote access to water and sanitation services for all. This paper documents an overview of initiatives and interventions that countries have implemented during the first months of the COVID-19 response. Initiatives have been identified across 84 countries worldwide, and categorized into those that aimed at securing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for all, and those that sought to provide technical and financial support to service providers. The pandemic has not hit countries in the same way. Accordingly, results show disparities in the response between and within regions, with the level of activity found in the countries varying largely in terms of ambition and scope. Hygiene promotion and infection prevention and control (IPC) has been widely adopted – at least one response measure found in 94% of mapped countries -, although not always matched in ambition with the assured availability of soap, water, and handwashing facilities. Support to vulnerable households to promote basic access to WASH services at scale was weak (38% of countries) or implemented locally (25%), and requiring additional focus, particularly in rural areas and small towns. In addition, parallel support needs to be extended to service providers or to households themselves in the form of cash transfers, in order to ensure the financial viability and the continuity of services. All lessons learned distilled from the pandemic should help strengthen the enabling environment for more resilient services in future emergencies. Areas for focus could include developing specific pandemic response strategies and plans; strengthening coordination; and establishing emergency financial support mechanisms for water operators, for example. Overall, findings presented herein contribute to enhance current and future pandemics prevention, mitigation, and recovery. The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2021-11-15 2021-07-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8254381/ /pubmed/34243010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148789 Text en © 2021 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Giné-Garriga, Ricard
Delepiere, Antoine
Ward, Robin
Alvarez-Sala, Jorge
Alvarez-Murillo, Isabel
Mariezcurrena, Virginia
Sandberg, Henning Göransson
Saikia, Panchali
Avello, Pilar
Thakar, Kanika
Ibrahim, Esmaeil
Nouvellon, Alban
El Hattab, Omar
Hutton, Guy
Jiménez, Alejandro
COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title_full COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title_fullStr COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title_short COVID-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: Review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
title_sort covid-19 water, sanitation, and hygiene response: review of measures and initiatives adopted by governments, regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders in 84 countries
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8254381/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34243010
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148789
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