The Turkana County Department of Health and Sanitation has intensified its social and behaviour change promotion to end open defecation through community-led total sanitation (CLTS) targeting village sanitation committees.
This follows the development of comprehensive CLTS/ water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) implementation work plan by the Directorate of Public Health and USAID NAWIRI, targeting 10 committees per sub-county.
The goal of the trainings is to create awareness on the importance of achieving open defecation-free (ODF) status within their villages, ensuring every household adopts fixed-point safe and hygienic defecation practices.
Speaking at the committee training in Loima Sub-County, the Deputy County Public Health Officer, Lucas Edete, urged the participants to construct and use their own pit latrines, setting an example for the community as change agents.
The County WASH Coordinator Reuben Kibiego added, “Let’s make use of latrines to avoid infectious diseases such as diarrhoea.”
Additionally, he explained that according to his observations, some people construct latrines but fail to use them, highlighting the need to change that behaviour.
Loima Sub-County Public Health Officer, Elphas Maiyo, highlighted that the participants were also champions of behaviour change in their respective villages.
Future plans include triggering CLTS through community barazas, monitoring CLTS implementation progress, conducting hygiene promotion activities at the household level, distributing water treatment chemicals, and providing digging tools to all the targeted villages.
By Peter Gitonga
