I want to drink you so bad

  • Where: ASMARA, ERITREA
  • What we do: Improving access to water and sanitation
  • For whom: 30.000 ERITREAN CHILDREN

Title of the project

I want to drink you so bad: water project for the Orotta Hospital

Place of the action

Asmara, Eritrea

Description of the context

In Eritrea, water supply for both human and animal use is linked to seasonal rainfall, which…

Eritrea has only one Referral Paediatric Hospital, the Orotta Paediatric Hospital, founded by the Italian community in 1930, and with about 130 daily admissions of paediatric patients. The water supply of the Orotta hospital comes from the public aqueduct. The water provided through the aqueduct does not meet the needs of the hospital in terms of quantity and quality. In particular, water supplied by the aqueduct comes inconsistently and not at scheduled hours. Neither maintenance activities are carried out (the pipes are in a state of neglect and often not functioning), nor awareness campaigns to promote users’ rational use of water. We need to consider that people from villages who do not have running water and toilets at home do not know how to use running water and toilet facilities. This general situation inevitably causes sanitation problems in the entire hospital. The sewers, into which discharge fluids pour, have problems of sedimentation due to occasional and irregular use. In the paediatric hospital, which has two toilet blocks per floor, only ground floor toilets are working.

The project

The project aims at improving access to water and sanitation for the Eritrean population. Specifically, the project aims at rationalizing water resources at the Orotta Hospital in Asmara, improving access to essential sanitation facilities. In agreement with Eritrean authorities, the expected results are the following:

  1. The availability of water for toilets of the main buildings (Orotta National Hospital and Paediatric Hospital), the creation of a hydraulic network supplying all the buildings and the provision of a water filtration and purification system have been ensured
  2. Trainings for the maintenance staff of Orotta Hospital on the rational use of water resources have been ensured.
  3. People who do not know how to use running water and toilets are trained for their correct utilisation.

The project is funded by the Italian Agency for Development- Khartoum.

Achieved results

On January 6, 2020 AnlaDi, the Eritrean Ministry of Health and the Admin of Orotta Hospital in Asmara signed a Memorandum of Understanding to highlight their roles and responsibilities in the TVTB project. In February, AnlaDi and the Eritrean construction company SEGEN signed a work contract to carry out the excavations; in the same month AnlaDi entered into a contract with the Italian company to purchase an osmosis water plant. In June 2020, the water plant was shipped to Asmara: our local technicians built a concrete base on which the plant will be located and began the excavations to lay the pipes. In the meantime, in Italy, we got in contact with an architect specialised in visual communication for the creation of pictograms in order to stimulate people and hospital users to make correct use of internal and external spaces of the hospital. At the end of November 2020, the printing of the pictograms will be sent to Asmara.