Introductory paper Asia practitioners'workshop 2012: By all and forever

In South and Southeast Asia, the number of people considered to have access to improved sanitation doubled since 1990 to more than to 600 and 400 million respectively.[1] Many of these facilities, however, are not yet well maintained and consistently used, nor are relevant hygiene practices consistently carried out. It has gradually been acknowledged that sustainability and equity must be the measures of success in the WASH sector. Construction is not enough. Simply constructing, or stimulating households and villages to construct toilets does not mean that these toilets will be consistently used and maintained resulting in a positive health impact. In a similar vein, we have learned that knowledge alone does not lead to sustained safe behaviour.  Consistent hygiene practices are not produced only by health talks and having people, largely women, memorize lists of messages about hygienic behaviours.  As the announcement to this workshop noted: we need to look beyond the necessary hardware (the pipes, taps and toilets) to the software (hygiene behaviour change, management, maintenance, finance and monitoring).