In August of this year, when the Ebola outbreak escalated in Liberia and a state of emergency had been declared for the country, Fatu Kekula, a young Liberian nursing student, improvised personal protective equipment (PPE) to care for her father, mother, sister, and cousin.
After three of the relatives survived, her method was featured prominently in the international news media as the “trash bag method”. The reports were meant to ignite a spark of hope in the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Women play a crucial role in providing care and support, and also in the use and management of the water resources and sanitation at the household level. In addition, voluntary community care work is done mostly by women, rather than men, thus as caregivers women experience further pressures brought on by the spread of HIV/AIDS in rural communities. While HIV/AIDS is not a direct water related disease, it is important to recognise that people living with this disease are much more vulnerable to infections or diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and other diseases linked to poor water supply and sanitation, thus it is essential that such diseases are prevented.
Having acknowledged this fact, it is important to note that there is still a low level of participation of women, particularly in decision-making and as a result, women still suffer the consequence of poor water and sanitary facilities,