Shimelba Refugee Camp is located in the Tigray regional state of Ethiopia, at about 1210 km from Addis Ababa. In the Shimelba refugee camp, the International Rescue Committe (IRC) is currently providing safe drinking water to 5930 refugees (UNHCR December 30, 2017 report). The existing water system consists of three 50m3 capacity concrete reservoirs and 14 water points with six faucets each and seven hand dug wells, meeting UNHCR standards, with the capacity to supply refugees members with more than 20 liters per person per day. There are 1236 family latrines, 4 public solid waste disposal pits for five zones where their usage is controlled by Environmental Health Agents (EHAs) and sanitation facility attendants regularly. In addition, there are also 15 rooms of public showers and 9 cloth washing basins serving the refugee community. IRC hired 45 EH incentive staffs working on sanitation and HP activities and water system, one water technician officer and one sanitation and hygiene promotion officer for the intervention of environmental health program.
The objective of the survey was to assess the current change in knowledge, practice and coverage of Shimelba refugee community in relation to water, sanitation and hygiene. 196 households were interviewed. The study revealed that the majority has good knowledge of at least three critical moments of hand washing, but only few respondents have a permanent functional hand washing facility in their household. This shows that strong behavioral change effort is required to get their knowledge in practice. In general, the identified problems are: high demand of latrine maintenance, privacy of users, availability of hand washing facility, safe water management at home level, hand washing practice, risk of diarrhea disease.
