Planning for urban environmental health programs in Central America : the development of water and sanitation-related environmental health indicators and the survey of existing data in three countries

This report documents the development of a set of water supply and sanitation related urban environmental health indicators that would assist decision makers in making programmatic decisions on where to prioritize their funding and reports on the results of a field test to collect that data. The indicators fell into seven areas: water supply, sanitation and wastewater, solid waste, hazardous waste, water pollution, food hygiene, and morbidity and mortality. In addition, the indicators were disagregated between formal urban and peri-urban areas. The data collection field trip took place in spring 1993 and included Guatemala City, El Salvador, and Tegucigalpa. While the data collected during the field trip did indicate significant water supply and sanitation related environmental health problems, it was found that insufficient data existed to make a programmatic decision on high priority problems. The report makes recommendations for future data gathering efforts.