Original Query: Ross Nickson, UNICEF, Kolkata
Posted: 15 September 2006
I am working with UNICEF in West Bengal, where the National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme (recently launched by the Government of India), is being implemented.
The programme is designed to institutionalize surveillance systems to monitor drinking water quality. For this purpose, the programme envisages involving ASHAs (village level health workers from the National Rural Health Mission), Anganwadi workers, science teachers, health personnel and other grassroots level workers to collect and test water samples.
In this context, I would request members to share their experiences/learnings (i.e. case studies, projects, documents) on the following:
- Experiences from other states/projects where sanitary surveillance or implementation of a simple water quality monitoring system has resulted in community-based action to improve drinking water quality (e.g. by protecting a spring, refurbishing a hand pump platform etc.).
- Qualitative and quantitative outcomes that resulted from such programmes.
- Learnings of members in designing and scaling up community surveillance and testing programmes.
Please see attachment below for the responses.