Mainstreaming inclusive sanitation into community-led total sanitation in Kenya

Access to water hygiene and sanitation services is a human right. Full participation and enjoyment of the right to sanitation services by people living with disabilities depend on accessibility and use of sanitation facilities. Attempts to increase coverage of water and sanitation services have excluded the needs of people living with disabilities or those too weak to use them. WASHplus, a five-year USAID-funded project, is piloting a rural sanitation program that supports the Ministry of Health to integrate inclusive sanitation in their Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) program, or CLTS+. The program encourages simple innovations—small doable actions that caregivers of people with physical or visual impairments can adopt to facilitate household access to sanitation facilities. WASHplus trained over 30 public health officers on inclusive sanitation. These facilitators have supported CLTS implementers including community health workers and natural leaders to promote use of improvised supportive devices to assist individuals with physical or visual impairments to access sanitation facilities.