Revision history [back]

Dear Brian,

thanks for this info. Wow, as early as 1981! Sounds like I have to change the Wikipedia article again.

A few days ago, I had posted on the SuSanA discussion forum to explain the changes I made to the article on WASH on Wikipedia: https://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/166-definitions-glossaries-dictionaries-mapping-tools/16379-who-invented-the-term-qwashq-for-water-sanitation-hygiene-was-it-wsscc-in-around-the-year-2000#17336

(it's a bit odd to run this discussion on two places in parallel; but perhaps also a good example of how the two communities can interact with each other).

In that post I had written (the formatting got lost when I copied it to here):

++++++++++++

Dear Eddy (and all),

Thanks a lot for your valuable contribution here! Based on what you, Dick and "The_Specialist" said (see posts above), I have now modified the text on Wikipedia as follows:

On the article about WASH, the history section (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH#History)

History [edit source | edit]

The acronym "WASH" was used from about 1988 onwards as an abbreviation for the "Water and Sanitation for Health" Project of the United States Agency for International Development.[19] At that time, the letter "H" in the acronym stood for "health", not "hygiene".

From about 2001 onwards, international organizations active in the area of water supply and sanitation advocacy, such as the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council and the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) in the Netherlands began to use "WASH" as an umbrella term for water, sanitation and hygiene.[20] "WASH" has since then been broadly adopted as a handy acronym for water, sanitation and hygiene in the international development context.[21]

The term "water" in this acronym is generally understood to refer to water supply only, not e.g. to integrated water resources management (IWRM) or water resource management in agriculture.

(to see what the references in square brackets are, see link above)

And on the article about WSSCC, history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Supply_and_Sanitation_Collaborative_Council#History)

After 2000, WSSCC expanded its work to include advocacy and communications, and began to use WASH as an umbrella term for water, sanitation and hygiene from about 2001 onwards.[42] This acronym existed as early as 1988 as an abbreviation for the "Water and Sanitation for Health" Project at the United States Agency for International Development.[43] "WASH" has now been broadly adopted in international development circles.[44]

This removes the earlier claim that it was WSSCC on its own who had "invented" the term WASH.

Do people agree with this wording?

And I would still like to add some pros and cons about the term WASH, if someone would like to help me with that?

You might be wondering "why is she so obsessed with getting things on Wikipedia right?". Well, time and time again I've heard from newcomers that their first hurdle in reading our documents was that nobody explained the abbreviation WASH. So what would a newcomer, or a journalist or a politican do? They would turn to Wikipedia and see how it is explained there. So we might as well make sure that the explanation on Wikipedia is one that we believe is correct.

Kind regards, Elisabeth ++++++++