A girl at a water point in Dhaka.
WaterAid / Juthika Howlader
Since 1986 WaterAid has been helping to improve the lives of poor people in Bangladesh through water, sanitation and hygiene education projects. These basic human rights underpin health, education and livelihoods and form the first, essential step in overcoming poverty.
We work with over 20 local partner organizations, who understand local issues and requirements, to implement practical projects as well as campaign locally and nationally to change government water and sanitation policies.
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Water supply coverage is relatively high at 75%, but low sanitation coverage (39%) combined with severe monsoon flooding means water contamination is a major problem.
As a result, water-related diseases are responsible for 24% of all deaths and gastroenteritis and diarrheal diseases kill 110,000 children below the age of five every year. To make matters worse the natural occurrence of arsenic in many parts of the country has contaminated water in a quarter of the nation's tubewells.
WaterAid's work is vital in Bangladesh. Our overriding goal is to reduce poverty and our work focuses on the poorest and most disadvantaged people, including women and the elderly.
Achievements to date
- WaterAid has been awarded $30.6 million to continue the Advancing Sustainable Environmental Health project (ASEH)
- The community-led total sanitation campaign started by WaterAid and local partner VERC has proved so successful that WaterAid and partners in Nepal, the Indian State of Maharashtra, Nigeria and Ethiopia have adopted the scheme
- WaterAid and its partners have established an agreement with the Dhaka Water and Sanitation Authority where slum dwellers are now recognized as legitimate users of municipal water services
Demonstration latrines show communities what sanitation options are available.
WaterAid / Juthika Howlader
WaterAid's urban water projects help desperately poor communities living in the slums of Dhaka, Narayangonj, Chittagong and Khulna to establish tubewells or communal waterpoints.
Together with our partners, WaterAid has negotiated with city water authorities for permission to establish communal water points, where slum communities can access water from the city water supplies through handpumps.
At first our partners signed the contracts on behalf of slum dwellers, who, with no official address, were denied personal water connections. Now success has been demonstrated in this approach, DWASA has agreed to sign contracts directly with communities.
The water points are run on a cost-recovery basis where users pay a small fee to the community management committee to use the facilities. The money collected covers the initial set-up cost, water bills, attendants' wages and maintenance.
In areas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the one hilly area of predominantly low-lying Bangladesh, WaterAid and local partners have helped villagers to construct gravity flow water schemes. These tap water at sources in the hills and pipe it to villages below. This has drastically reduced time spent collecting water and cut the rate of water-related diseases in the districts covered.
Download WaterAid's Bangladesh information sheet (PDF 272.11KB)
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