Improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene in Bangladesh

Concern Bangladesh has a long-standing and established focus on providing WASH interventions to extreme poor communities in Char, Coastal and Haor regions. In the Coastal areas, salinity intrusion is intensified by climate change (rising sea levels, droughts, erratic rainfall, drying up of rivers, etc.) and shrimp farming, which has contaminated surface and ground-water sources.

Concern's contextual analysis in the Coastal region found that although more affluent households can afford to buy water purifying filters, extremely poor people travel 3-4 hours to fetch water, or spend BDT 25 for 20 litres of water, or resort to drinking saline and arsenic contaminated water from tube wells.

Monsoon floods and river erosion in riverine Char islands cause widespread damage to homesteads, drinking water sources, particularly tube wells, and sanitation facilities such as low-cost pit latrines. For the poorest and the most marginalized people living in the Chars, basic services such as safe drinking water and sanitation facilities remain largely inaccessible.