NRC National Resource Centre

The National Resource Centre (NRC) of NGO Forum is a knowledge management and dissemination centre serving as a national memory bank in the WatSan sector which also functions as a one-stop mall with the objectives of collecting, documenting and sharing of information relevant to the sector.

500,000 Yemeni children at risk of dying in 2012, says UNICEF: Half a million Yemeni children have been announced by the United Nations Fund for Children of being at risk of dying by 2012, if required resources of sufficient nutrition are not met.

In a conference held to discuss this looming humanitarian crisis, UNICEF director for Middle East and North Africa, Maria Calivis warned of a looming humanitarian crisis, saying a year of turmoil has doubled the number of malnutritioned children.

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Sanitation is Key in Controlling Worm Diseases: Diarrhea, abdominal pain, malaise, anemia, and delayed child development: these are the debilitating effects of one group of diseases, the soil-transmitted helminths (worms). As indicated by the name, these diseases are transmitted via contaminated soil; as such, good sanitation has a key role in prevention. However, because sanitation systems vary greatly, their impact is difficult to study. Now, a PLoS Medicine systematic review and meta-analysis (a reanalysis of data from already published studies), by Ziegelbauer and coauthors, quantifies the benefits of sanitation: for all three of the STHs, when sanitation was both available and regularly used, the odds of getting a worm disease was cut in half.

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NASA Study Shows Health, Food Security Benefits From Climate Change Actions: A new study led by a NASA scientist highlights 14 key air pollution control measures that, if implemented, could slow the pace of global warming, improve health and boost agricultural production.

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India’s air is the most toxic finds Yale-Columbia study: India’s price for rapid economic expansion is having the most toxic air in the world, according to a study by Columbia and Yale Universities, which has ranked 132 nations on an Environmental Performance Index.

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Asia: leadership for sanitation needed at both central and local levell: The responsibility for sanitation in Asia is fragmented over different agencies, and in most cases the priority given to sanitation is low. Therefore more leadership and political will is needed to make sure that organisational structures function, that plans with good intentions become a reality on the ground and that resources go to the right places. While leadership for sanitation is needed at all levels, it’s most urgent at sub national level, in districts and provinces, because it’s there where the actions take place.

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Analysis: When aid meets arsenic in Nepal: After the discovery of unsafe levels of arsenic in Nepal’s groundwater more than a decade ago, government officials and aid groups are finally taking a critical look at whether their efforts have made a difference. “We didn’t raise money for broken filters,” said US-based geologist Linda Smith, expressing frustration during a recent visit to Nawalparasi District in the southern Terai region, one of Nepal's hardest-hit areas by arsenic-contaminated groundwater, when she came across abandoned water filters.

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INDONESIA: Bird flu deaths raise red flags: Two recent deaths from bird flu in Indonesia highlight the need for continued vigilance against a possible resurgence of the deadly virus, an official and health expert warned. On 16 January, a five-year-old girl from northern Jakarta died after being tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus. She was a relative of a 24-year-old man who died on 7 January, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, adding that the two had contact with the same pigeons in their neighbourhood.

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HEALTH: The true burden of cancer: Breast cancer continues to be misunderstood, under-diagnosed and fatal, particularly in developing countries, say researchers, despite more than one million official annual diagnoses and almost half a million recorded deaths annually.

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Arsenic cancer risk still high decades later in Chile region: People exposed to very high levels of arsenic in Chilean drinking water back in the 1950s and 60s are still showing a higher-than-normal risk of bladder cancer -- years after the arsenic problem was brought under control, a new study shows. The findings are not surprising, researchers say, since the cancer would take decades to emerge.

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U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Makes Climate Change a Top Priority: Developing countries (including China) are expected to account for more than 90% of global energy growth in the next 30 years. The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) is addressing the urgent need for sustainable, clean economic growth in these regions with the release of its Climate Change and Development Strategy for 2012.

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South Asia’s GDP loss over lack of sanitation: The South Asian nations are losing 5 per cent of their GDP annually, due to lack of sanitation facilities and unhygienic behaviour. Of the 1.5 billion people living in South Asia, 65 per cent lack basic sanitation even today. Daniel Toole, the Regional Director for South Asia, UNICEF, presented the alarming statistics at the South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN), in Colombo.

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The Bangladesh WASH coalition draws attention to marginalized people’s needs in decision-making processes to help to achieve the Government’s target of sanitation for all.: Through engaging in grassroots consultations and cooperation with the media, the coalition is able to ensure that access for the poorest rises higher on the national agenda.

National WASH Coalition
The WSSCC-Bangladesh chapter (WSSCC-B) includes 36 organizations; national and international NGOs, government departments, development partners and academia.

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Making Women’s Voices Count: Integrating Gender Issues in Disaster Risk Management in East Asia and Pacific: Grounded in extensive field work in Lao PDR and Vietnam, the Infrastructure and Social Development teams in East Asia and Pacific have developed a series of five Guidance Notes on Integrating Gender Issues in Disaster Risk Management (DRM). The notes address key issues and bottlenecks, related to addressing gender issues into DRM projects, and are designed to help task teams design and implement gender dimensions into DRM work across the East Asia and Pacific Region.

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Translating Research into National-Scale Change: A Case Study from Kenya of WASH in Schools

Over the past 5 years CARE, Emory University’s Center for Global Safe Water, and Water.org, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Sustaining and Scaling School Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Plus Community Impact (SWASH+) project, have worked to achieve sustainable and national-scale school WASH services in Kenya through applied research and advocacy. The project tested a multi-armed school WASH intervention through a randomized, controlled trial with multiple policy-relevant sub-studies. Research results were then used to advocate for policy change to bring about sustainable school WASH services nationally. These efforts have focused on improving budgeting for operations and maintenance costs, improving accountability systems with a focus on monitoring and evaluation, and more effectively promoting knowledge of WASH through teacher training and the national curriculum.

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