GIS Analysis of Human Excreta Management in Slum areas and its impacts on the Environment -Viwandani, Nairobi Kenya

Informal settlement in many developing countries in the world are overwhelmed by lack of essential infrastructure, scarce and strained resources, which causes significant public health problems. Nairobi, the largest city in Kenya, has several informal settlements, which lack systems for managing human excreta. Managing effectively of human excreta remains elusive in the highly populated informal settlement. Inadequate urban sanitation excessively impacts the social determinants of slum population health. This impacts on health range from food contamination, malnutrition, and chronic diseases like typhoid and cholera. In this research, we closely examined the human waste management problem in the Viwandani informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. We combined quantitative survey of sociodemographic, housing, and land use data; mapped out toilets and water points; utilized qualitative focus group information to better find how sanitation is linked to slum population and the impacts human Excreta generation has on Mukuru slums. The results showed that, 82% of population in the slum don’t have toilets, and the ones’ present are shared with large populations. For the households with access to toilets, and the average distance to a public toilet (which are few) is over 52 meters. Some toilets were also found located near clean water point, which exposes the population to sanitation issues. Mukuru residents report that diarrhea is the third biggest health complication they experience, which takes 35% of the survey. Scarce, unsafe, and unhygienic sanitation facilities result in multiple and overlapping health problems in urban informal settlements