Innovating for Impact: Tackling the sanitation crisis in humanitarian settings

As the need for humanitarian assistance reaches unprecedented levels worldwide, there is a growing urgency to provide access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Yet in the face of armed conflict, extreme weather events and humanitarian crisis, providing fit-for-purpose WASH services that fully meet the priority needs of people affected remains a challenge.

The theme of this year’s World Toilet Day – “Toilets: A place for peace” – highlights the importance of safe water and sanitation during such crisis. It’s a stark reminder that 3.6 billion people live without safely managed sanitation, with displaced individuals often living in highly congested environments where water supply and sanitation systems are difficult to deliver, damaged, destroyed, or non-existent. Safely managing human excreta in such situations is challenging, where the risk of public health outbreaks is high. This is particularly the case in densely populated settings such as those found in refugee settlements. Research and innovation is urgently needed to accelerate action in this space and catalyse innovative sanitation solutions tailored to these demanding contexts.

Recognising this need for innovation, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) launched an Innovation Challenge focussed on faecal sludge treatment solutions that addressed disease outbreaks in densely populated humanitarian settings. Building  on key findings from the HIF’s previous WASH Gap Analysis  and Problem Exploration on Faecal Sludge Management reports, this Challenge is responding to the pressing problem of how to best manage faecal sludge in emergencies to drive better public health outcomes.

Through this problem-led Challenge, we supported two projects to test and pilot their innovative sanitation solutions in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. As these projects wrap-up, what solutions have they been piloting, and what have we learned so far?

Microbial tools to optimise the lime treatment of faecal sludge

The use of mineral lime to rapidly treat faecal sludge and inactivate pathogens is a well-recognised and low-cost solution in the early stages of a humanitarian emergency. The University of Brighton collaborated with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and BRAC to pilot an innovative bacteriophage-based approach to assess the effectiveness of lime treatment on faecal sludge. Their innovation offers humanitarian actors an off-the-shelf solution to deploy during the onset of a crisis, particularly useful while longer-term biological sewage treatment is established.

The project has shown that certain groups of bacteriophages (or viruses capable of infecting bacteria) are suitable for field deployment and can be used to effectively detect pathogen removal in densely populated settings, such as the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. These project findings are helping to establish the optimum amounts of lime needed to significantly reduce the level of pathogens in faecal sludge, and will help optimise and tailor lime-based treatment for different humanitarian contexts.

This has led to the creation of two user manuals consisting of simple visual instructions to support humanitarian actors on the ground assess the quality of lime and the effectiveness of lime treatment in emergency situations.

Leveraging solar power to treat faecal sludge

In another initiative, building on their existing wastewater treatment system within the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazaar, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) collaborated with Veolia Foundation, iccdr,b and IHE Delft to pilot a solar-powered solution for faecal sludge treatment. This system uses high temperatures to destroy harmful pathogens. Their project has been exploring whether the solar thermal pasteurization of faecal sludge in densely populated humanitarian settings can effectively reduce harmful pathogens – such as those causing cholera outbreaks – and whether this solution can be replicated and scaled in other humanitarian contexts.

The initial findings are promising, with the solar thermal pasteurizer technology shown to be effective at eliminating the pathogens that cause cholera from faecal sludge. This opens the possibility of safely reusing the treated sludge, and positions this as a potential long-term and climate resilient sanitation solution in humanitarian settings. The project is continuing efforts to optimise the performance of the technology to tackle the daily high rates of faecal sludge accumulation, as well as evaluate the cost-effectiveness and scalability of this technology. A video showcasing the project can be watched here.

Next steps

This year’s World Toilet Day emphasises the growing urgency to strengthen humanitarian WASH response and ensure the provision of safe sanitation in times of crisis. More research and innovation is needed to build the evidence base of the types of solutions and interventions that can work and don’t work in different humanitarian settings.

As these two projects come to a close, we look forward to sharing more key findings and equipping the humanitarian community with the knowledge and tools needed to deliver effective sanitation solutions in emergencies at scale – anywhere and at any time.