Lessons learnt

Background: In December 2012, Kenya government and UNICEF jointly implemented a Community-Led-Total Sanitation Intervention (CLTSI) in Busia County to tame poor sanitation that was at 42% vs 49% National. The CLTSI was to achieve total sanitation among Busia County households through sanitation behavior change. Main aim of the study was to document the lessons learnt after implementation of CLTSI in Busia County. The study focused on the implementation process of the CLTSI to draw experiences. Documenting lessons learnt helped in understanding and improving implementation of CLTSI, accounting for success (or failure) and enhancing best practice of CLTSI management before countrywide rollout. Methods: Quasi experimental design was used while multi-stage and random sampling was used to sample respondents. A total of 35 (70%) of primary implementers of CLTSI participated in the study Structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Results: Findings show that out of 35 facilitators who implemented CLTSI, only 25(71.4%) were trained on the rigours of CLTSI. Duration of training varied from 3 days 10 (28.6%) to 5 days 15 (42.9%) of which more than a half 21(60.0%) CLTSI facilitators felt training was inadequate. Challenges experienced during implementation of CLTSI included: time constraint 24 (68.6%), transport constraint 20(57.1%), inadequate skills 17(48.6%), poor community mobilization 35(100.0%), household illiteracy 29 (82.9%), financial constraint 18 (51.9%).Other reasons included hostile community, poor leadership 32 (91.4%). Conclusion: For the purposes of rolling up the CLTSI, some lessons learnt could be adopted in order to achieve total sanitation in the country. From our evaluation study, CLTSI was found to have impacted positively to the residents of Busia County.