Tackling the high cost of unclean water, poor sanitation through smart solutions in Kenya

Kenya spends an estimated Ksh.4.3 billion every year treating diseases linked to unclean water and poor sanitation. The country also incurs losses of about ksh.2.1 billion in productivity when illness forces people out of work.

This is according to Dr. Mary Muthoni, Principal Secretary in the State Department for Public Health and Professional Standards, who spoke during a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) stakeholder engagement held during the launch of SaniBook.

SaniBook is a comprehensive digital platform and publication pushing for smarter sanitation solutions in Kenya, in a bid to help the country meet SDG 6.2 by 2030.

According to Dr. Muthoni, unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene contribute to about 1.4 million deaths globally every year.

“When you come back home, almost 20,000 people die. These are not just figures but a reality. When sewage is left to flow into drains and rivers, it pollutes the environment, contaminates water sources and quickly shows up as cholera, diarrhoea and worm infections,” she emphasized.

Thomas Odongo, Chairman of the Water and Sanitation Providers Association (WASPA), said that while Kenya has undertaken several sanitation pilot projects, many fail to progress beyond the pilot stage.

“We have a lot of pilots in sanitation, but it ends there for reasons that we know, like funding. There is no sustainability because we come up with pilots but we don’t engage communities,” Odongo said.

He added that the water and sanitation sector also suffers from challenges related to data availability and consistency.

“With this digital tool, we are able to track, make corrections, scale, and have sustainable innovations,” he added.

Elizabeth Wamboi Mwangi, WaSHVoice Program Director, said the SaniBook innovation is a premier knowledge management tool meant to transform isolated projects into proven national systems, moving Kenya from trial and error towards a trajectory of evidence-based knowledge.

Eng. Festus Ng’eno, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, who also attended the stakeholder engagement, acknowledged that the digital tool will play a critical role in addressing climate change challenges within the water sector.

“For my State department, it compiles fragmented efforts into a unified resource that will actively shape our national strategy and work plans. I am particularly impressed that this first edition of SaniBook does not shy away from the hard truth. It unpacks the seven sanitation bottlenecks that have historically hindered our progress, moving beyond mere observation to validated progress for our interventions,” he said.

SaniBook is a one-of-a-kind digital publication that brings together scattered information on water, sanitation and hygiene from research institutions, as well as public and private sector players across the country.

This will ensure effective tracking of projects, comparison of interventions, and scaling of successful solutions.

The platform is expected to help WASH stakeholders identify what is working, existing gaps, and how resources can be better channelled into impactful projects.