Strengthening the local monitoring skills
As part of the hands4health activities, a series of training workshops on ‘Water quality analysis and chlorination principles’ was implemented in Palestine by the Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU), in collaboration with Cesvi. In total, three workshops were carried out between March and June, 2023, targeting school health-supervisors and municipal water and health departments in Hebron.
Workshops 1 & 2
These workshops took place in March, and comprised a detailed presentation of water sampling techniques, storage of samples, biological and physico-chemical characteristics and testing procedures, in addition to local and international standards for drinking water quality. Chlorination principles were also presented, including how chlorine works, available forms of chlorine, factors affecting chlorination efficiency, and calculations of chlorine dose.
In the first workshop, the results of the comprehensive water quality study that was implemented 2 months before were discussed and conclusions were drawn. In the second session, chlorine testing devices were disseminated among the schools’ delegates. The latter were trained on how to use the devices to test free chlorine concentrations in the schools’ drinking water and how to report the results using the dashboard provided by Cesvi.
The target audience included field health-supervisors in the schools of the Central Hebron Directorate of Education and a delegation from the environmental health department at Hebron Health Directorate (session 1), and the health-supervisors in the 13 schools targeted by the project in Hebron (session 2).
You can access the related news articles on session 1 and session 2 on PPU’s website.
Workshop 3
The last workshop of the series took place in June and targeted water and health departments in Hebron governorate municipalities, including a delegation from the Palestine Water Authority (PWA).
Following the same format of the previous sessions, the training comprised a detailed presentation of water sampling techniques, storage of samples, biological and physico-chemical characteristics and testing procedures, in addition to local and international standards for drinking water quality. Chlorination principles were also presented, including how chlorine works, available forms of chlorine, factors affecting chlorination efficiency, and calculations of chlorine dose.
Discussions about chlorination procedures and water quality monitoring by PWA and municipalities took place, enabling the exchange of experiences between participants and project partners. The last part of the training focused on wastewater characteristics and treatment technologies. Additionally, successful innovative solutions developed by the PPU research team for the treatment of different types of industrial wastewaters were presented.
You can access the related news articles on session 3 on PPU’s website.
