
Impact at a Glance
Health & WASH
69
Projects
with Health & WASH Component
15
Countries
600 K
Beneficiaries
59%
Female
(Women & Girls)

Clean and accessible drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene are key to human health and well-being.
Safe WASH does not only affect the health of people, it affects other important aspects such as facilitating access to school, increasing attendance rate, and promoting livelihoods.
People with safe WASH are more resilient, living in healthy environments and dignified communities.

Why is it important?
According to WHO,
- Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (collectively known as WASH) are crucial for human health and well-being.
- More than 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to basic sanitation (more than 25% of the world’s population).
- About 3 billion people worldwide lack adequate facilities to safely wash their hands at home. The regional disparities are stark: in sub-Saharan Africa, 75% of the population (767 million people) lacked basic hand washing facilities, followed by Central and Southern Asia at 42% (807 million people), and Northern Africa and Western Asia at 23% (116 million people).
- 829K people die each year from diarrhea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation, and hand hygiene.
- Millions of people globally lack adequate WASH services and consequently suffer from or are exposed to a multitude of preventable illnesses. Lack of safe WASH negatively impacts quality of life and undermines fundamental human rights. Poor WASH services also weaken health systems, threaten health security and place a heavy strain on economies.

RET’s Interventions
RET has been providing Health and WASH programs since 2011, working on creating healthier environments through access to integrated and quality health services and facilitating access to safe water, sanitation solutions and good hygiene practices, ensuring survival, dignity and disease prevention and care.
RET pays special attention to people in mobility including youth and their families; vulnerable host communities; people with disabilities; and those in remote rural communities. RET’s Health and WASH programs have been implemented according to international standards and existing national protocols, while considering local knowledge and community support mechanisms. RET have incorporated methodologies that are in line with the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards for Humanitarian Response, whose latest update is based on the commitments made at the first World Humanitarian Summit, held in 2016, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other global initiatives.
According to these guidelines, RET’s WASH programs use a combination of approaches, ensuring that assistance is community-based to meet WASH needs effectively and efficiently. RET’s responses and interventions enhance the medium and long-term goals of communities and minimize environmental impact. Coordination, community participation and capacity building are key aspects of our intervention.
RET implements corrective and preventive maintenance WASH works in schools, health centers and community spaces, namely in the distribution and storage systems, and in the sanitary units and wastewater treatment systems. In addition, RET develops sustainable strategies for the improvement of water quality and hygiene practices. To provide an effective response to the needs of people in mobility, mechanisms are implemented to facilitate access to hygiene practices and housing solutions, in tandem with their protection requirements.
In the area of Health, our work is focused on strengthening of the existing health systems for essential health care, capacity building of health personnel, facilitating access of the population to essential medicines and medical materials, including information dissemination to prevent communicable diseases.
RET also provides Sexual and Reproductive Health interventions following the principles and obligations declared in the Humanitarian Charter, which include the rights to live in dignity, to protection and security.

In the Health and WASH programs, RET incorporates protection principles that promote meaningful access, safety, and dignity in humanitarian aid.
In addition, the programs are conflict sensitive and adopt a “do no harm” approach to avoid aggravating existing conflict dynamics in fragile contexts.

HEALTH & WATER, SANITATION & HYGIENE (WASH)
- RET has implemented 69 projects with Health & WASH component.
- RET has implemented projects with a Health & WASH component in
15 countries across Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. - 600 K direct beneficiaries (59% female) targeted in RET programs with Health & WASH component to date.
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RET won the “Prize of Excellence” for its work with child soldiers and the communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo
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