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Our Work

Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH)

Providing adequate water, sanitation and hygiene services is a key public health challenge in today’s world. Access to safe and sufficient water and improved sanitation, as well as maintaining good hygiene, is crucial to human health, well-being, dignity and development. International Medical Corps works to provide these most basic human needs, no matter how challenging the conditions. With hundreds of thousands of deaths each year caused by unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and insufficient hygiene practices, International Medical Corps prioritises the prevention of WASH-related diseases as part of our comprehensive approach to health interventions. In doing this, we focus on the following key areas:

  • providing and improving access to reliable, safe and clean water;
  • providing and improving sanitation; and
  • promoting safe hygiene practices.

We implement WASH projects across a range of settings, including communities, refugee camps, schools and health facilities. We work throughout the disaster cycle—during the initial emergency relief, through the recovery phase and into development—responding to natural disasters, disease outbreaks such as cholera and Ebola, mass population movement as a result of conflict, and other complex emergencies. Throughout all of our programs, we actively engage communities and relevant authorities in the development and implementation of sustainable WASH interventions.

783 million people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion are without even basic sanitation facilities
Around 315,000 children under-five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. That's almost 900 children per day, or one child every two minutes
Unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrheal diseases

Areas of Focus

Water

Hygiene Promotion

Sanitation

WASH in Healthcare Facilities

WASH in Nutrition

Overview

International Medical Corps works to provide sufficient, safe, physically accessible and sustainable water for personal, domestic, livelihood and institutional uses in emergency as well as non-emergency situations.

Key Stats

783 million people—roughly 1 in 10 globally—have no access to an improved water source
On average, in developing nations women spend 25 percent of their day collecting water for their families
Improved water supply reduces diarrheal disease by as much as 25%

Overview

Widely recognised as the most cost-effective intervention in the water and sanitation sector, hygiene promotion is integrated into all of our WASH projects, enabling communities to better protect themselves from the threat of infectious diseases. Simple handwashing with soap and water can reduce the incidence of diarrheal disease by nearly half, and the rate of respiratory disease by about one-quarter. We promote hygiene awareness and handwashing messages within communities, schools and health facilities.

Key Stats

Handwashing is practiced by only 19% of the global population
Promotion of safe hygiene is the single most cost-effective means of preventing infectious disease, at $5 per disability-adjusted life years
Simple handwashing with soap and water can reduce the diarrheal disease incidence rate by 47% and the rate of respiratory disease by 23%

Overview

Despite the UN’s recognition of sanitation as a human right, the Millennium Development Goals initiative—which ended in 2015—missed its target by 700 million people, with 1 in 3 people continuing to live without adequate sanitation. Of the 2.4 billion people who did not have access to improved sanitation in 2015, more than 1 billion were forced to defecate in the open, according to UNICEF and WHO. Without adequate sanitation, communities are highly vulnerable to diarrhea and other diseases, and risk contaminating their drinking water. International Medical Corps provides sanitation facilities during emergencies to prevent the outbreak of disease, and works with communities to build sustainable, safe and adequate sanitation.

Key Stats

1 in 3 people lack access to adequate sanitation
Just one gram of fecal material can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs
The economic cost of poor sanitation and hygiene amounts to more than 5% of the GDP in many developing countries

Overview

Water, sanitation and hygiene are critical in health facilities, where the risk of patients contracting hospital-acquired infections remains high and can often be attributed to inadequate WASH. As a public health- focused organization, International Medical Corps focuses on strengthening healthcare service delivery at the facility level by establishing a safe water supply, sanitation infrastructure and handwashing facilities, as well as by training healthcare staff in infection prevention and control.

Key Stats

42% of healthcare facilities in Africa do not have access to safe water
Appropriate hand hygiene is the leading means of reducing cross-infections
WHO estimates that, at any given moment, some 1.4 million people worldwide are ill because of infections acquired in hospitals

Overview

About 50 percent of undernutrition globally is associated with infections caused by poor WASH. Diseases such as diarrhoea inhibit nutrient absorption and lead to undernutrition and stunting, which in turn lower resistance to infections and increase the risk of dying from diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections. To break this vicious cycle of recurring sickness, International Medical Corps integrates WASH with nutrition and health interventions.

Diarrheal disease is closely linked with malnutrition and poor WASH, and is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children under 5 in developing countries—despite the fact it is both preventable and treatable.

Key Stats

The World Health Organization estimates that half of all undernutrition is associated with infections caused by poor WASH
Effective WASH interventions can prevent at least 860,000 child deaths from undernutrition per year
25% of all stunting in 24-month-old children can be linked to having five or more episodes of diarrhoea