Students at a Chad school share one toilet and one tap

Students and staff at the Belle Vue de Moursal public primary school in N’Djaména, Chad, face severe shortages of water and sanitation facilities.

The school operates with only one working toilet out of four and a single functional tap for the entire student body and staff. This lack of infrastructure forces children to wait in long lines to use the bathroom or drink water, which sometimes leads to arguments among the students.

Overcrowding further complicates the learning environment at the school. Classrooms hold more children than their intended capacity, leaving students cramped on benches with little room to move. The situation worsens in the afternoon when the primary school buildings also host classes for the Belle Vue middle and high schools. These conditions make it difficult for teachers to provide individual attention to students. Mbaïohede Yves, a teacher and assistant to the school director, called on the Chadian government to intervene.

He requested that authorities build or renovate toilet blocks, install more taps, and provide better classroom equipment. The report notes that a previous project successfully installed 170 toilet cabins in 16 schools to serve 28,000 students, suggesting that improvements to school sanitation are achievable.