Sanitation & Disaster

Important Notice: Learn about and donate to Lifewater's Field Trainer Mobilization Fund, which directly sends financial assistance to qualified volunteer WASH field trainers who are providing emergency relief services to countries hit by disaster.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, famines, drought . . . Disasters come in many forms and can claim thousands of lives when they strike. Nowhere is a disaster’s impact more readily seen than in communities already weakened by poverty. The Red Cross estimates that up to 97 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries.

Around the world, poor communities lack the infrastructure, planning, and resources to handle the devastation that disasters can bring. “Poverty plays a major part in keeping people vulnerable to disasters. Disasters in turn keep people in poverty, wiping out the few resources they have.”^‡

Disasters typically damage existing sanitation facilities and displace people, increasing pressure on facilities that may already be under strain. In displacement emergencies, many people find themselves in crowded conditions with inadequate sanitary facilities. As a result, open defecation occurs in places that contaminate the water supply and food chain. If even just a small portion of a displacement community is practicing open defecation, the whole population is at greater risk of diarrheal diseases, worm infestations and hepatitis.²⁰

Access to emergency sanitation facilities is needed to break the cycle of disease and death in impoverished communities that have experienced a disaster. Lifewater and its in-country partners are committed to helping communities obtain adequate sanitation. Lifewater’s training programs strengthen communities, better preparing them for potential disasters and helping them to recover when disasters do occur.

^‡ TEARFUND, Before Disaster Strikes, March 2004.