Bangladesh

Bangladesh, lying between India and Myanmar on the Bay of Bengal, is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with a diverse culture deeply influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.

More than 140 million people are crowded onto deltas where Himalayan rivers empty into the sea. Its low lying lands are subject to severe monsoon flooding which every year displaces huge numbers of people and destroys livelihoods.

Despite the abundance of surface water, diseases are common throughout the country due to
contaminated drinking water sources and low sanitation levels.

Over-abstraction from rivers and groundwater means that water tables are dropping, while saline intrusion and the natural presence of arsenic are making matters even worse.

For people living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, on shifting river islands, or in the desperately poor slums of Dhaka and Chittagong (where people are given no right to the land on which they live), the challenges of gaining access to water and sanitation are particularly difficult.

Our urban water projects help desperately poor people living in the slums of Dhaka and Chittagong.

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

WaterAid's work is vital as without water and sanitation childhood ailments like diarrhoea are killers (worldwide 5000 children die every day from water-related diseases). In Bangladesh water-related diseases are responsible for 24% of all deaths. Every year, gastroenteritis and diarrhoeal diseases kill 110,000 children below the age of five.

To make matters worse the natural occurrence of arsenic in many parts of the country has contaminated water in around a quarter of the nation's tubewells. WaterAid is now involved in pilot arsenic mitigation efforts and helped launch the National Arsenic Information Support Unit in 2001.

In addition to water source contamination rural water projects have to overcome other challenges. In areas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where groundwater is scarce and streams often contain animal faeces and bacteria, WaterAid and local partner Green Hill have installed gravity flow schemes, where water is tapped at its source in the hills and piped to villages below. This has drastically reduced time spent collecting water and cut the rate of water-related diseases in the districts covered.

WaterAid in Bangladesh
WaterAid has been working in Bangladesh since 1986 and now, with more than 20 partner organisations, helps to improve the lives of poor people through water, sanitation and hygiene education projects. Our overriding goal is to reduce poverty and our work focuses on the poorest and most disadvantaged people, including women and the elderly.

Find out more on the WaterAid Bangladesh site

Slum dwellers are denied personal water connections.

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

WaterAid's urban water projects help desperately poor communities living in the slums of Dhaka, Narayangonj, Chittagong and Khulna to establish tubewells or communal waterpoints.

WaterAid and its partners negotiated with the Dhaka city water authorities for permission to establish communal waterpoints, where slum communities can access water from the city water supplies through handpumps. WaterAid's partners sign the contracts on behalf of slum dwellers, who are denied personal water connections as they have no right to the land where they live and therefore no official address.

The waterpoints are run on a cost-recovery basis where users pay a small fee to the community management committee to use the facilities. The money collected covers the initial set-up cost, water bills, attendant's wages and maintenance.