Who Where and When
What are the water sources in rural Nicaragua?
On the left hand side you can see how in 1971 only a small percentage of the rural population had
access to a piped water system, the column in sky-blue. The green column represents the population
who obtains their water from handdug wells and the red column represents rivers, streams or surface
water. These last mentioned sources can be considered as dangerous and are an important chain in the
transmission of the diarrheal diseases. Handdug wells are polluted as well but are not that much a
chain in the transmission. Upgrading of these wells will improve water quality.
Twenty-four years later by '95 there was a percentile increase in coverage through piped water
systems but in numbers there were even more people who depended on not hygienic water sources. The
question was how this disperse living population could be reached? The piped water system is only
an option for a small part of the rural population.
The internationally applied solution has been the community handpump in the centre of a village.
The rope pump, the striped column, started at the other side, at the family well with the additional
objective to take the people away from the rivers, making water more easily accessible at their homes
for hygiene, washing clothes etc. In a later stage the rope pump took over the place of the traditional
handpumps on the community wells too.
By now in the year 2000, the rope pump is covering an increasing percentage of the rural population
(about 25%) and the total number of persons who depend on unprotected water sources is decreasing.
The 1971 and 1995 numbers are based on statistics from the National Institute for Statistics (INEC)
The 2000 numbers are extrapolations. The rope pump coverage figures are based on production figures
multiplied by estimated number of users.
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