Good equipment alone does not guarantee wastewater treatment — trained operators do.
Across many decentralized systems, daily operation and maintenance are the real bottlenecks. Operators often receive little to no technical training, manuals are written in foreign languages, and management teams lack the resources or supervision capacity to ensure proper function and compliance monitoring. The result is a landscape of installed but underperforming systems — a challenge faced by many emerging wastewater sectors, including in Laos.
In May 2025, our training for operators from 12 provincial hospitals in Laos addressed this gap directly. With support from the HEALTH project team and partners, participants learned how to conduct performance inspections and basic troubleshooting for their on-site wastewater treatment plants — building the foundation for sustainable operation.
The package wastewater treatment plants are compact systems with a small footprint and are often installed underground. They are essential in hospitals not connected to public sewer networks. Yet they only perform as designed when kept in continuous, well-maintained operation.
Countries like Laos, where the wastewater sector is still emerging, heavily rely on imported expertise and supply chains for equipment and spare parts. Apart from DEWATS and NBS systems, most other wastewater technologies are imported with limited or no after-sales support. Environmental authorities also have minimal monitoring capacities. This combination makes long-term performance difficult to sustain.
Through the HEALTH project, the Lao Ministry of Health — with support from UWC and partners — is inspecting and preparing rehabilitation plans for hospital systems. For improving inspection and regular monitoring, locally made sludge samplers have been provide to measure sludge levels in settlers and bioreactors — a small but effective tool that makes visible what is happening inside underground plants and empowers operators to take ownership.
We are proud to lead this work alongside:
Lao Ministry of Health, Public Works Training Institute (PTI), the German Ministry BMUKN and its Export Initiative Environmental Protection program, and aqua&waste international GmbH.
