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Mithun Mondal walks home with a jug of water through a landscape made barren by salination after cyclone Aila struck in 2009, Koyra Number 4, Ward 7, Koyra, Bangladesh.

Bangladesh

Over 7,000 children die from diarrhoea every year in Bangladesh and water-related diseases cause nearly a quarter of all deaths.

Over 28 million people in Bangladesh lack access to an improved water source.

44% don't have access to improved sanitation in Bangladesh, over 65 million people.

Over 7,000 children under five years old die annually from poor water and sanitation in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Over 140 million people are crowded onto low-lying land where annual monsoon floods contaminate water sources and leave millions with appalling sanitary conditions.

The crisis

Bangladesh's geography provides many challenges. Natural arsenic contaminates water, putting 30 million people at risk. The lowland areas are also susceptible to flooding from seasonal monsoons and cyclones, further damaging the land.

In increasingly populated urban areas, slums are home to millions of people who are denied legal water and sanitation supplies, forcing them to live in appalling conditions.

Our approach

Communities are always at the heart of what we do. Our partners raise awareness of people's rights to water and sanitation and of the links between poor hygiene and health.

In urban slums, we work to connect people living without sanitation or safe water supplies to municipal facilities. Instead of being forced to pay for illegal, unsafe water, maintenance jobs are created, giving people ownership of facilities.

We believe that local governments should be accountable to the communities they serve so we work closely with them to increase their ability to plan, monitor and deliver sustainable water and sanitation services.

Our impact

Our global impact >

WaterAid initiated a Community-led Total Sanitation approach in Bangladesh, encouraging communities to take action to help themselves. It is now being used across our programmes.

We also helped the Government to develop the National Sanitation Strategy, which aims to bring universal sanitation facilities to Bangladesh by 2015.

Together with our partners, we made an agreement with the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority to recognise people living in slums as legitimate users of public water facilities.

In Bangladesh last year we reached:

  • 145,000 people with safe water
  • 733,000 people with improved sanitation.

Watch this short film to find out more:

A mother and her son and daughter wash their hands from a bucket.