The rural urban infrastructure divide, 2nd Edition..

A previous blog provided information on the extent of infrastructure access inequality. That blog was missing information on health and electricity. The CSO have now released a very brief summary on this from the Living Conditions Monitory Survey (2006) :

Access to health facilities :

• In Zambia, majority of households, about 95 percent had access to a health facility. More urban households, 96.2 percent reported having used the facility compared to their rural counterparts with 94.4 percent.

• In terms of proximity to the health facility, majority of the households in Zambia(75.5 percent), were within a 5km radius of key socio-economic facilities, which included a health facility, middle basic school, hammer mill or public transport.

• Urban households were more advantaged in terms of access to all the facilities than rural households. About 93.0 percent, of urban households were within a 5 km radius of a health facility compared to 54.5 percent of their rural counterparts

Access to safe water:

• The proportion of households with access to safe water was 59 percent. Access to safe water was higher in urban (about 89 percent) than in rural areas (about 43 percent).

• Lusaka province had the largest proportion of households with access to safe water (96 percent) while Northern Province recorded the smallest proportion of households with access to safe water with about 16 percent.

Sanitation :

• About 59 percent of households in Zambia had own pit latrine, 7.3 percent communal latrine, and another 4.6 percent used neighbours’ pit latrines.

• Fifteen percent used flush toilets (9 percent own flush toilet inside house, 5 percent own flush toilet outside house and 1 percent shared flush toilet). About 13 percent of the households regrettably did not have any toilet facility.

• More of the rural households than the urban households used pit latrines (76.8 percent) compared to 59.8 percent of the urban households.

• The proportion of households without a toilet facility was 53.4 percent in Western Province, 33.2 percent in Southern Province and 21.5 percent in Eastern Province.

Access to electricity :

• About 19 percent of households in the country had access to electricity. More households in urban areas, 49.3 percent had access to electricity than those households in rural areas, 3.2 percent.

• Among the provinces, Lusaka recorded the largest proportion of households with access to electricity (51.4 percent), followed by Copperbelt (43.9 percent), Southern (13.5 percent), and Central (11.9 percent). The province with the lowest proportion of households with access to electricity was Western Province (3.5 percent).