Renovation of sanitation facilities and incinerators at Gashena’s Emanuel Clinic, Ethiopia.

Proper sanitation facilities (toilets, latrines, and incinerators) promote health by enabling people to properly dispose of their waste, prevent environmental contamination, and reduce risk to themselves and their neighbors.

Thus – after more than ten years – new sanitation facilities are urgently needed. The aim is to ensure professional separation of human excreta from direct contact with people, thus preventing infections of all kinds.

As a clinic serving health, our disposal system is extremely precarious and has not met legal requirements for years. Our visitor from Switzerland in July this year, Thomas Hostettler, was appalled and seriously urged for an immediate change . This project should be the first priority for the clinic in Gashena. Now we are planning a new toilet and an adapted incinerator. They will be a model for health care and will contribute significantly to reducing mortality and the rate of illness due to contamination diseases.

More than one third of the world’s population and also the vast majority of the inhabitants of our community in Gashena and the surrounding area do not have access to a simple toilet. This condition is a major health hazard. Also the Sanitation in our clinic should definitely provide safe health care. Our existing toilets are usually used throughout the day, from the opening of the clinic in the early morning until deep into the night (and sometimes during the night). We use the facility in many ways showering, bathing, also for obtaining urine and stool samples for laboratory diagnostics.

The incinerator is an environmentally friendly and technically proven method of waste disposal that provides reliability, safety and efficiency. Our incinerator, built 10 years ago, is miserable, inadequately equipped, and fraught with risks for hospital visitors, especially children who like to take rubber gloves, syringes, and glucose bags, etc. But these materials are highly contaminated and increase the risk of infectious disease.

For this reason, we are asking PBF for financial support to repair our toilet and incineration facilities.  The photos show the current condition in October this year.

Ashenafi Mamo, founder and director of the Emanuel Clinic in Gashena.