Université Roi Henri Christophe

In Haiti, surviving pregnancy and childbirth is especially tenuous for young women, who are already marginalized. One of the four leading causes of death for women 20-24years old is pregnancy- or childbirth-related. An important gap remains regarding youth perspectives of maternal health and well-being within their communities. We conducted a community-based participatory research study using Photovoice to understand the lived experiences of 17 young women from La Pointe, Haiti, and its surrounding rural communities, who survived a maternal near-miss, a grave obstetric event that one narrowly escapes. Youth participants took photographs and participated in individual interviews and focus groups to represent and share their pregnancy and birthing experiences. Visual and narrative data were analyzed by participants and our community research team using reflexive thematic analysis. The five main themes represent a perilous maternal journey. The themes included (a) the social context youth are embedded within, (b) structural, systemic and political forces youth face, (c) pain and suffering throughout youth maternal experiences, (d) search for support during the maternal trajectory, and (e) youth-generated solutions for improved maternal health and well-being. Our findings amplify youth voices on the pressing need to address multiple, intersecting issues that shape maternal health and well-being for all women with particular attention to the needs of young women. Understanding the experiences of Haitian youth survivors of maternal near-misses can inform research, practice, and policy to curb maternal deaths and maternal near-misses among young women within low-resource settings.

The increasing demand for electricity and the efforts to enable the transition to cleaner and low-carbon sources have led the world to a revolution. Power production from renewable sources is gradually increasing, requiring multi-scale planning for grid expansion. Given that the economic factor plays a significant role in planning the expansion of a transmission network, this paper seeks to present a methodology to facilitate the incorporation of new wind power plants into power transmission networks. Considering the interconnection of a new wind power plant with the existing power grid, the authors present a lowest-cost strategy for developing production and transmission systems in the long term. The paper also presents some analyses to detect any breaches or incidents that could jeopardize the safe and reliable operation of the electrical system. The proposed methodology was tested on the test system IEEE 39 bus.

Abstract Container-based sanitation (CBS) is increasingly used to provide safely managed sanitation in low-income urban settlements. However, questions remain around the viability of scaling up the technology, partly because it relies on regular emptying and servicing of containers by a CBS provider. This paper investigates mechanisms by which this process can be achieved efficiently. Three separate collection strategies are evaluated for their routing efficiencies as CBS goes to scale. An open-source route optimisation solver determines the constituent driving and walking distances necessary for each strategy and has been applied in areas of Cape Town, Cap-Haïtien, Lima and Nairobi. The results indicate that with fewer users (e.g. 50) transfer station models offer the shortest driving routes. However, these do require users to carry their containers (e.g. up to 170 m when stations are 100 m apart). As the number of users increases (e.g. to 5,000), visiting individual houses from a neighbourhood depot offers increasingly efficient driving distances. Overall, however, the results suggest that economies in collection distances for scaled CBS will be largely conditional on greater vehicle capacity (rather than any particular provision strategy). This highlights the importance of road access throughout low-income urban settlements in providing a viable CBS service at scale.

Container-Based Sanitation (CBS) has rapidly progressed from its inception less than a decade ago to its recent classification as a type of improved sanitation facility by the Joint Monitoring Programme. CBS in many ways represents a sustainable service, as it addresses the entire sanitation service chain; offers a variety of service-based business models; and is affordable to people living in marginalized and informal urban settlements. At the same time, CBS services which have been operating for a number of years have grown relatively slowly. Taking CBS to scale will require solving several diverse challenges, particularly the need for government mandates; regulation; and innovative financing. This paper presents the collective views of some of the world’s leading CBS practitioners in an effort to summarize the potential, research gaps, and major challenges to scaling CBS.