The Resource Room of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Environmental Health Group is situated in the School’s main building in Keppel Street, London. Initially set up as part of a Water and Sanitation Resource Centre called WELL which was funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development, the room houses an archive of water, sanitation and hygiene related documents and photographs dating back to the 1920’s. This has been supplemented over the years with a small collection of books as well and reports relating to projects undertaken by Environmental Health Group staff and consultants.

We are taking the opportunity in 2008, as it is the International Year of Sanitation, to enlist the help of Radmila Vlatkovic of the LSHTM Library Service update the LSHTM archive catalogue. LSHTM will make the archive publicly available via Hygiene Central. Archive resources will be updated periodically, however, should you desire further information please do not hesitate to contact us via the contact page.

Each month during 2008 an aspect of the resources relating to sanitation will be presented on the International Year of Sanitation webpage. The intention is to progress chronologically through the archive, finishing in December 2008 with current work undertaken by the Hygiene Centre Water and Sanitation experts together with their plans for the future.

The EHG Resource Room has a unique set of photographs taken from a collection of Sir Richard Feachem, Professor of Global Health, when he was at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The slide show that you will see at the top of the International Year of Sanitation webpage shows scenes from early to mid 20th century of villages in Africa; waste disposal in the United Kingdom and aspects of healthcare in Mauritius.

Kyrgyzstan is a land-locked nation in Central Asia. The countries surrounding it are Kazakhstan to the north, China to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the west and Tajikistan to the south. It is a predominantly mountainous country with broad grassy highland valleys in between. In the north-east is a large salt lake called Issyk Kul, this occupies one of the highland basins. The country has a population of approximately 5 million.

In 2000 staff from the WELL Resource Centre at LSHTM undertook a mission to two regions of Kyrgyzstan to identify opportunities for the UK Department of International Development to support hygiene and sanitation initiatives within the water sector. Part of the output was a poster which can be found by clicking here.

Further work was undertaken by Adam Biran, Anara Tabyshalieva, Joy Morgan and Val Curtis for the WELL Resource Centre in 2001, resulting in a report on the Formative Hygiene and Sanitation research Project: Kyrgyzstan.

A recent publication by the UK Department for International Development also highlights areas in which they are working with other donors to make progress in the areas of Aid effectiveness, Health/HIV and AIDS, Governance, Community Development, and Water and Sanitation with respect to reducing poverty in Kyrgyzstan.

More information relating to water issues within Kyrgyzstan can be found on UNDP’s Waterwiki site.