Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy
TANA TOILET BLOCKS
Tana Toilet Blocks is a project on sanitation design for public schools in Antananarivo, Madagascar. School toilets provide the only option for accessing adequate sanitation for many children from impoverished neighborhoods in Antananarivo. Consequently, school toilets play a crucial role for the hygiene conditions among children in such urban areas. However, lack of appropriate design solutions for the school toilets decrease the usability and ultimately compromise hygienic conditions for children in these communities. This project sought to improve the design of school toilets in order to address issues with public hygiene for impoverished children in Antananarivo. The project was developed in collaboration with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). Nearly half the population of Madagascar lives in severe poverty and inadequate access to water and sanitation has a debilitating impact on health, well-being, and productivity. Nationally, water-related diseases cause at least a quarter of all deaths of children under five in urban areas. Two-thirds of the population in Antananarivo lives in informal settlements characterized by inadequate access to water and sanitation. This has a significant impact on the health, safety, and dignity of the residents of such low-income communities. WSUP has worked with the municipality in Antananarivo on designing and implementing school toilet projects in order to improve the hygiene conditions for children in impoverished communities.
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The Tana Toilet Block project sought to lower costs and improve the quality of school toilets. The project included an analysis of the workflow and the design of previous school toilet projects. Secondly, interviews with users and workshops with stakeholders highlighted a number of problems with previous projects. A design concept was developed in response to these findings consisting of a ‘toolbox’ including detailed toilet drawings split up in modules. This enabled faster planning of new toilet projects, utilization of best-practice solutions, and application of lowcost construction methods. On this basis, the project was successful in improving the user experience, reducing costs of construction, and reducing time spent on planning the toilet projects by the WSUP staff.
Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy →
