Poo Mapping: a Simple Solution in the Fight Against Preventable Disease

Author: Andy Thomson
Date: 12 July 2010

Where there is no toilet, there is disease. And where there is disease, there follows death. Tragically, this is no overstatement. Every year, 1.8 million children die from diseases caused by poor sanitation.

In an effort to fight this preventable disease, Oxfam is using a basic mapping method, referred to as 'poo mapping', to help communities in developing countries improve their health and sanitation.

Research tells us that poor sanitation is the biggest cause of death for children under five in the developing world. And yet this can be prevented by something as ordinary as a toilet.

Working with Oxfam's local partner organisations, communities in East Timor and Bougainville are drawing maps of their villages, which include houses, and markings of where people go to the toilet. They are also asked to mark where they go to the toilet in an emergency, for example when it's raining, or when they have diarrhoea.

When the villagers look at those areas, marked in a yellow pencil, they quickly realise they are depositing waste all around each other's houses, in their water sources and near eating areas.

Communities are working, with help from Oxfam's partner organisations, to build hygienic pit latrines using local materials, located at a safe distance away from water sources. Any training they need is provided by locally-based engineers, and they also receive vital health education to protect them for the future.

As well as keeping the villagers safe, implementing sanitation systems has the double benefit of stimulating local businesses to provide the materials needed. In the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), for example, Oxfam's partner has cleverly engineered a cheap and effective upgrade of the pit latrine. Now local masons are building an affordable round loo - a basic squatting slab made from local materials to meet the rising demand.

All round the world, Oxfam is combining practical, low-cost sanitation solutions with educating communities about hygiene, and helping people to improve the health and sanitation of their families and communities.

For more information, or to find out how to support Oxfam New Zealand's work in the Pacific, East Asia and Africa, please visit www.oxfam.org.nz

Andy Thomson

Water Programme Manager
Oxfam New Zealand