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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on India's performance in sanitation over the last decade as it strives to meet the Millennium Development Goal target.

In doing so, both qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed. The latter method includes a regression analysis. Income and income inequality variables have been included in the analysis.

Whilst India has made progress towards achieving access to sanitation for its people, the nation continues to perform relatively poorly to its neighbours and on a comparative global basis. At the national level, substantial rural-urban and income disparities are linked to a reduced level of sanitation access. Both forms of analysis support the view that income inequality in India is directly related to a lack of sanitation facilities.

The study is based on secondary data gathered from WHO and UNICEF sources. These are national data gathered by these agencies in two periods. These are aggregated data.

The study has major practical implications in policy formation in the area of sanitation access to both rural and urban India. The state level data analysed by the study will also be useful to make policies at disaggregated level. India, indeed, needs to improve the conditions on an urgent basis. Even in South Asia standard, this nation is behind from almost all other nations of the region.

The social implications are to make people particularly poor aware about the sanitation issue lack of which contributes to health hazards and gestro condition for children and old. The sanitation related diseases contribute to huge loss of working hours in both rural and urban communities.

The study contributes original ideas and demonstrates with a simple regression analysis how sanitation depends on income and income inequality of the poor.

The present study intends to highlight the issues and challenges pertinent to sanitation practices among urban slum women in India.

The primary qualitative data has been collected from 100 households sampled by stratified random and purposive sampling through in-depth interviews, and a structured interview schedule and themes were developed accordingly.

The main theme-based results of the study included the challenges of open defecation in slums, public toilets as an alternative, sanitation-related stress in slum women, compromised state of health of women and children, menstrual hygiene among women in slums and increasing burden on women in terms of water management. The study recommends the creation of toilets in every slum locality with maintenance and awareness to be raised.

Urban sanitation has received less research than rural sanitation. The present study focused on the issues of urban sanitation, which are often neglected. To ensure the study's uniqueness, researchers visited and mentioned each open defecation site to understand the situation.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0782

Upgraded water and better sanitation are essential for human health, but it is still a challenge to get admittance to these facilities and the concerns of public health becomes most victims. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the socioeconomic and demographic forecaster linked with admittance to safer water and upgraded sanitation facilities in Rwanda. The study uses the cross-sectional data from the 2014 to 2015 Rwanda Demographic Health Survey and uses linear generalized models for the analysis.

The logit and probit regressions were used to analyze whether or not any forecaster variables influenced the predicted variable.

The findings showed that the households with the highest education background were 11.55 times more probable to have admittance to upgraded water sources compared to those who had none level of education. Likewise, the respondents with secondary and higher education were, respectively, 9.55 times and 4.09 times more probable to have admittance to upgraded latrine facilities. The authors found the increase of household size as significantly associated with admittance to the upgraded water source and latrine facilities compared to those families with fewer household members. The results also found that wealthier households had a larger odds ratio significance in getting admittance to upgraded water sources and sanitation facilities compared to poorer households. The study results found the greatest gap in access to upgraded water sources and sanitation facilities in rural areas compared to urban areas.

The implications of the study results call for water policy formulation and implementation in Rwanda, as well as generally for other developing countries.

In Rwanda, this is the first study that empirically inspected the relationship between socioeconomic and demographic forecasters on admittance to upgraded water and sanitation facilities.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2019-0452

The purpose of this paper is to examine the sanitation knowledge and practice of staff who work in restaurant kitchens and to suggest sanitation management plans and efficient ways to enhance sanitation knowledge and practice in the restaurant industry.

The survey research was conducted using a questionnaire composed of 73 questions in three areas of general information, sanitation knowledge, and sanitation practices. The respondents were selected from among kitchen staff working in restaurants that were both at least 198 m2 in size and listed in the Korean Foodservice Information database. The collected data were analyzed to identify the differences between sanitation knowledge and practices.

The results showed that the respondents were well aware of the importance of sanitation during food preparation and cooking whereas they had a relatively lack of personal hygiene. Age and education level of kitchen staff correlated with sanitation knowledge and practices, and kitchen staff working less than 12 hours per shift scored significantly higher in terms of sanitation knowledge than those who worked more hours per shift. Also, kitchen staff working in restaurant franchises showed higher levels of both knowledge and practice than those working in independent restaurants.

A more diversified sanitation-training program should be developed on the basis of the characteristics of kitchen staff members and restaurant characteristics. As kitchen staff members themselves have identified change in perspectives on sanitation as the most important factor for improving practice levels, the training should not only transmit information but should be developed into a training method.

This research provides suggestions for how restaurant kitchens in South Korea can make progress in a situation where sanitation implementation is limited to the transfer of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to link debates around the international law on human rights and disaster management with the evolving debate around the human right to sanitation, in order to explore the extent to which states are obliged to account for sanitation in their disaster management efforts.

The paper is based on analysis of existing laws and policy relating to human rights, sanitation and disaster management. It further draws upon relevant academic literature.

The paper concludes that, while limitations exist, states have legal obligations to provide sanitation to persons affected by a disaster. It is further argued that a human rights-based approach to sanitation, if respected, can assist in strengthening disaster management efforts, while focusing on the persons who need it the most.

The analysis in this paper focuses on the obligations of states for people on their territory. Due to space limitations, it does not examine the complex issues relating to enforcement mechanisms available to disaster victims.

This is the first scholarly work directly linking the debates around international human rights law and disaster management, with human rights obligations in relation to sanitation. The clarification of obligation in relation to sanitation can assist in advocacy and planning, as well as in ensuring accountability and responsibility for human rights breaches in the disaster context.

The purpose of this paper is to present the latrine ownership ladder as a conceptual policy framework to enhance sanitation uptake in low-income peri-urban areas.

The paper draws from literature and a case study in a Ghanaian peri-urban community to highlight the challenges that undermine sanitation uptake in low-income peri-urban areas and the prospects of various levels of facility sharing as conceived in the latrine ownership ladder approach.

The authors argue that the infrastructural and other socio-economic challenges of low-income peri-urban areas prevent some households from acquiring their own latrines. For such households, a more responsive approach to latrine promotion and prevention of open defecation would be the recognition of shared ownership regimes such as co-tenant shared, neighbourhood shared and community shared, in addition to the promotion of household latrines. The paper identifies provision of special concessions for peri-urban areas in policy formulation, education and technical support to households, regulation and enforcement of sanitation by-laws among complimentary policy interventions to make the latrine ownership ladder approach more effective.

The paper provides an insight into the debate on redefining improved sanitation in the post-2015 era of the Millennium Development Goals and offers policy alternatives to policy makers in low-income countries seeking to accelerate the uptake of improved latrines among peri-urban and urban slum dwellers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore water management practices in four criteria – access to potable water; despoilment or pollution levels; grade of sanitation architecture; and grade of delivery architecture – in a variety of different Latin American and European nations to establish techniques that are currently been utilised in Europe that could improve water management in Latin America.

A systematic review of the available literature on water management in Europe and Latin America is performed to uncover differences and similarities in Latin American and European nations. The documents find are mostly recent, ranging from the last five years (2012-2016).

Some best practices from Europe cannot be applied in Latin America due to lack of funding. Fortunately, this is likely to change, as many Latin American nations’ economies are rapidly improving. Tentative recommendations include installing a system of pipeline that passes through all rural areas, and governments partnering with local businesses to provide sanitation, and regular sanitation and environmental inspections to minimise water pollution. It is also advisable for serious consideration to be given to achieving a measure of universality vis-à-vis water management standards across Latin America.

There is limited information in literature on the analysis of water management in Europe and Latin America, so this paper serves as a reference to fill the gaps, mainly in Latin America because that region is in development compared to European countries with advanced water systems.

This study aims to evaluate the consumer perceptions related to sanitation in the five-star hotels due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also identified the most significant sanitation dimensions and their influence on the pertinent emotions experienced by the hotel consumers.

It identified seven sanitation dimensions (i.e. exterior of the hotel, guestrooms, washrooms/restrooms, in-house restaurant dining, hotel employees, public areas and handling of food) which were assessed through 10 positive and negative consumer sanitation emotions. A structured online survey was conducted to collect data from the 763 five-star hotel consumers. Exploratory factor analysis was applied on the 35 parameters of the seven identified sanitation dimensions, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the most significant dimensions among the hotel consumers.

Results revealed that among the seven sanitation dimensions, “exterior of the hotel” and “public area” dimensions were found to be statistically less significant compared to the other sanitation dimensions. Findings related to consumer emotions showed that a significantly high percentage of consumers revealed strong negative emotions, i.e. disgust and discontent toward the poor standards of sanitation in the hotels.

The study results may be helpful for the hotel administrators and managers to adequately plan the training sessions for their employees based on the consumer perception and emotions toward the identified sanitation dimensions. Further, it may also help in the implementation of the COVID-19 awareness program based on the consumer inputs and perceptions.

Although a few studies have been performed to explore the sanitation dimensions in the hospitality sector before, but this will be a first attempt to identify and measure the sanitation dimensions and corresponding consumer emotions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Poor environmental sanitation affects environmental quality and health. Ghana is a developing country whose sanitation profile has been one of the lowest in the world in recent years. This has prompted various views regarding effective approaches for improving sanitation in Ghana for better environmental quality and health. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of National Sanitation Day (NSD) as a model for improving environmental sanitation in the Edina Traditional Area (ETA), Ghana.

The study used key informant interviews and focus group discussions to collect qualitative data from purposively selected participants from predominantly fishing and farming communities in the ETA, Ghana. Data were analysed thematically and presented using interpretive narratives and most significant stories.

Results showed a high level of community awareness of the model but low participation in the intervention, culminating in the model’s ineffectiveness to make any meaningful impact on improved sanitation in the study area. Key factors responsible for the model’s ineffectiveness include apathy, inadequate logistics, politics and attitude.

Government should engage more effectively with the municipal assembly, private sanitation companies and community level authorities to address the political, logistical, attitudinal and institutional challenges associated with the model to ensure effective participation in the NSD for better sanitation outcomes, leading to improved environmental quality and health for sustainable development.

This is one of the few studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of the NSD in Ghana since the model was introduced in the country in 2014. The outcome of the study could inform sanitation management policy, practice and research in Ghana as well as other developing countries that may adopt or adapt Ghana’s model.