RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socioeconomic Profiles of WFP Operational Areas and Beneficiaries
water, placing a huge burden on household activities. Children suffer from diarrhoea,
particularly during the rainy season, largely because water sources are unprotected and
become easily contaminated. (Poor hygiene and sanitation practices also contribute to the
prevalence of diarrhoea in CHT).
Figure 10: Potable Water Source by WFP Priority Zone
% of Households
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Access to Potable Water by WFP Region
CHT Coastal Drought N/W Char Haor
Tubewell Dug well
WFP Region
Spring/ river/ pond Other sources
Access to potable water does not vary by household socioeconomic status or sex of
household head. Although many poor households throughout the other five zones of the
country (besides CHT) do not have their own tubewells, most households are able to access
clean potable water from neighbours’ tubewells. Tubewells, however, do not necessarily
yield water all year round, especially in the Coastal and Haor Zones, where tubewell water
dries up during the dry months of the year.
Community focus group discussions did not disclose concern about arsenic from the
tubewell water, except in the Char and Haor Zones, where villagers are compelled to drink
tubewell water contaminated with arsenic in absence of alternative sources of drinking
water. In cases where arsenic has been identified, most communities in the study have been
able to shut down the tubewell and shift to other apparently arsenic-free tubewells.
2.3 SANITATION PRACTICE
Figure 11 outlines household sanitation practices disaggregated by socioeconomic status.
The results suggest that a large proportion of all households – more than one-third of all
households – do not use any latrine or rely on hanging latrines, which represent unsafe
sanitary practices. Household sanitation behaviour varies widely by socioeconomic class.
Most invisible poor households (56 percent) do not use latrines while non-vulnerable
households either rely on a pit latrine (54 percent) or a flush toilet (37 percent).
Sanitation practices also offer large regional variations. Latrine use is most prominent in the
Coastal zone and the CHT, but significantly more households in the CHT also use hanging
latrines. Disaggregated data indicate that in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, substantially more
Marma, Bawn, Tripura and Murang households do not use latrines (39 percent) compared to
Bengali and Chakma households (six and nine percent respectively). One quarter of Chakma
households, however use hanging latrines.
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