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Building safe family bathrooms

A stone building with clothes out to dry

The five-year conflict in Yemen has affected almost the entire country. Al-Misrakh district in Taiz governorate has not escaped the pain of war – there is a critical lack of essential basic services, one of which is water and sanitation services.

Muhammad Abdullah is 41 years old, living in Al-Wajd village of Al-Misrakh district with his family of six. He says: “Because of the weakening economic situation as a result of the ongoing conflict and the lack of job opportunities, we were unable to build a safe bathroom. We used to have a dilapidated, exposed and unsafe bathroom. It was exposed and women couldn’t use it during daylight hours.”
 
In order to improve the situation, CARE intervened with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented a project to address water provision and environmental sanitation. One of the project’s activities was building and rehabilitating family bathrooms.

CARE supported 40 beneficiaries with the materials needed to build and rehabilitate the bathrooms. They excavated the cisterns at the required depths and flattened them, in addition to constructing and rehabilitating their bathrooms according to the CARE’s specifications and drawings.

A man squatting next to a building
Muhammad Abdullah next to his new bathroom

Amer Abdel Hamid, the head of the village community committee in the village of Al-Wajd, says: “We did not expect the community to engage in this way; they did everything themselves. They dug out the cisterns and flattened them and built concreted rooves. This work helped us to get rid of the exposed toilet drains, which were leading down to the roads and other public places. This was causing the spread of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and flies in addition to polluting surface water sources. So thank you CARE and USAID for supporting and motivating our community to achieve this.”

“CARE supported us,” says Muhammad. “And now we are using the bathroom safely at all times. I’m really grateful for this intervention and we hope it carries on in other places.”

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