Tippy Tap Water Hack - adapting to 'scarcity' during COVID-19 

Underpinning the WASH challenges in Africa is the concept of water scarcity that many countries face, which refers to over 1000 people competing for a single flow unit of 1,000,000m^3 per year (equivalent to less than 1000m^3/person/year). But this approach to understanding water scarcity is disputed as being dominated by a reductionist, physical evaluation; failing to acknowledge the limitations to the distribution and access to water which is contingent on an array of complex factors including political, economic, and social determinants.

Regardless of what metric is used to define the relationship between water and people, the bottom line is that there is indeed inequitable access to clean water across Africa, which thereby compromises their sanitation and hygiene- and is a great threat to public health. The merits of handwashing for public health, for example, has been studied widely over the past decades- particularly its role in reducing infectious diseases such as cholera, diarrhoeal disease and more recently, COVID-19.

However, the rate of handwashing is incredibly low in Sub-Saharan Africa as only 15% of the population have access to basic facilities with soap and water. This makes it incredibly difficult for communities to follow the advice of public health officials, who emphasise frequent handwashing as the key intervention in preventing the spread of the virus.

It is incredible to see how a range of development actors in Africa have rapidly mobilised resources to fight against the pandemic , leading to a notable increase in handwashing practices (Amegah, 2020). One initiative that was particularly interesting was the “#tippytapchallange” in South Africa- a UNICEF campaign to encourage young people to build a simple, locally made handwashing device, in hopes to address the country’s historical access gap:

In resource-limited communities that have struggled with poor hand hygiene, tippy-taps have proven to be revolutionary, as Mbakaya et al. (2020) reviews in detail. A tippy-tap is constructed with locally available materials, uses little water relative to ordinary taps (only 50ml compared to the tap alternative which demands 500ml) and is incredibly user-friendly. Hence, it offers an immediate hygienic and low-cost solution in under-developed settings, who are especially vulnerable to the spread of the virus given how densely populated they tend to be. Installing tippy taps at key points within the communities where transmission rates would be higher, such as schools or bus stops, have made significant contributions to controlling the spread (Amegah, 2020). Likewise, the convenience and ‘easy to adopt’ nature of the technology, promotes the practice of handwashing overall which inherently is beneficial for wider public health.

The coronavirus pandemic has reiterated the dire importance of access to clean water. A seemingly easy prevention strategy of ‘washing hands regularly’ is virtually impossible in communities that struggle to meet their very basic water needs. But interventions like the tippy-tap prove how simple hygiene practices can be facilitated once they are reimagined to become more accessible and low-cost. The urgency that the #tippytapchallenge generated will indeed have a lasting impact of improved handwashing practices in South Africa. Looking forward to a post- COVID-19 era, the need for greater access to handwashing facilities and more generally, clean water, would be appreciated even more. It is imperative that development actors capitalise on this sentiment to further water and sanitation services- albeit as basic as a tippy-tap- to remote communities in hopes to encourage handwashing and reduce their risks to other diseases as well.