Assessing Access to WASH in Urban Schools during COVID-19 in Kazakhstan: Case Study of Central Kazakhstan

Berik Toleubekov, Zhanerke Bolatova and Martin Stafström
Additional contact information
Berik Toleubekov: Division of Social Medicine and Global Health, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Jan Waldenströms gata 35, 214 28 Malmö, Sweden
Zhanerke Bolatova: School of Public Health, Biomedicine and Pharmacy, Karaganda Medical University, Karaganda 100008, Kazakhstan
Martin Stafström: Division of Social Medicine and Global Health, Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Jan Waldenströms gata 35, 214 28 Malmö, Sweden

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 11, 1-12

Abstract: The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) produces global estimates of the real situation of access to water, sanitation and hygiene services, and sanitation and hygiene in households, educational institutes and health care facilities; however it is lacking data on schools in Kazakhstan. Thus, the aim of this research was to assess access to WASH in schools of urban area in Kazakhstan. The study was conducted in seven schools of Central Kazakhstan during the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictive measures. Three data collection methods were used: a questionnaire for administrative staff, a questionnaire for parents and observation. Parents of offline study pupils (only second and third grades due to the pandemic) were included in the survey. Students had access to in-building toilets in all schools connected to the centralized sewer. The number of school toilets varied from 7 (KAZ200085) to 61 (KAZ200089). The average amount of toilets was 28.08 ± 16.97. Only two out of seven schools complied with the requirements of Kazakhstan national sanitary standards for the ratio of school toilets to the number of students. From the questionnaire with the school administrations, it was defined that the primary source of drinking water was the public water supply. All schools regularly disinfect and check the water supply system. At the same time, the results also revealed discrepancies in the answers between administration and parents (2.6% of parents showed that their children have rare access to drinking water), and insufficient monitoring of implementation of WASH services. This study also confirmed that the full provision of access to water and water services in the structure of educational institutions solves several SDG targets.

Keywords: WASH; schools; access to WASH; SDG; drinking water; sanitation; hygiene; system approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/11/6438/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/11/6438/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:11:p:6438-:d:824088

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().