Estimates for 2008 from the Millennium Development Goal's Joint Monitoring Programme for Namibia suggest that 73 % of the rural population have no sanitation and defecate in the open, 6 % have access to unimproved sanitation, 4 % use shared toilets and 17 % use improved sanitation (WHO & UNICEF 2010). The percentage of the population with access to centralised wastewater infrastructure is no known.
The Kunene basin in Namibia is a remote, sparsely settled and mainly rural area. Wastewater infrastructure in the form of sewer networks and centralised wastewater treatment plants do not exist, although The National Sanitation Strategy 2010-2015 foresees the construction of a sewer network in Okangwati by 2015 (GoN 2009a).
Statistics from the Demographic and Health Survey for 2006-2007 estimated that over 80% of the population of the Kunene region do not have access to Improved Sanitation and that around 60 % of children’s stools are not disposed of correctly (GoN 2009b). In order to reach the Millennium Development Goal for access to sanitation in Kunene province (thus halving the percentage of the population without access to sanitation in 1990 by 2015) 1 000 toilets a year need to be built from 2009 to 2010.
Poor access to sanitation and poor hygiene causes public health problems and cholera outbreaks have occurred in the basin over the last few years, particularly in 2006. See Water and Sanitation Related Diseases.
