Sunday, November 10, 2013

Why is Hygiene and Sanitation in most cases not being considered in Informal Settlements?

Even in informal settlement there is a form of formality, various rules seem to guide the layout of the settlements for example, circulation, and boundaries are legible even in extreme cases. My question is: why is Hygiene and sanitation in most cases not being considered by inhabitants of informal settlement. Informal settlement in this case Slums, are productive breeding grounds for ailment such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, dengue, pneumonia, cholera, and diarrheal disease, despite this, hygiene and sanitation is of low concern to inhabitants. Yes it might be overwhelming for inhabitants to tackle this problem on their own due to lack infrastructures but there is also a visible ignorance of inhabitant to the subject matter. Inhabitants of slums are seen to turn their surroundings slowly to a dump site or in some case live in dump site. I seek to understand the reason of this phenomena and hopefully derive a solution or a proposal to aid the promotion of hygiene and sanitation in informal settlements.

A slum in Lagos, Nigeria 
Mokattam Rocks in Cairo, Egypt




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