ABSTRACT
PIP: Sahar Matha Secondary School and Ghoretar Health Post serve approximately 30,000 people living in scattered communities over the steep foothills of the Himalaya in East Nepal. A pilot health education and sanitation project was implemented with the objectives of giving the secondary school students the knowledge and skills necessary for building domestic pit latrines in their villages. It was hoped that the students could be motivated to create enough awareness of the need for domestic pit latrines so that latrines would continue to be built after the pilot phase of the project. At the end of the 4 week building period there were 150 completed domestic pit latrines and 45 pits or partially complete latrines. Seeing pit latrine in Ghoretar at the school and health post had not been enough to motivate people to build their own domestic pit latrine. It seemed that people could understand the convenience of privacy in an area where there was no jungle cover, but did not appreciate the hygiene reasons for using pit latrines. It is now planned to extend the project into the 19 schools which feed the 2ndarty school, with the 2ndary school boy and girl scouts taking the health messages to the primary schools. Particular attention will be given to the teaching of modes disease transmission. So that the villagers can use their latrines hygienically.^ieng