In Sierra Leone, inefficient drainage systems and poor waste management are also a major public health issue and intensify disasters in some communities.

Clogged drainages lead to flooding and stagnant water, with vulnerable slums transformed into waterborne epidemic zones carrying diseases like malaria, cholera and typhoid.

These slums are highly populated urban residential area consisting mostly of closely packed, decrepit housing units in a situation of deteriorated or incomplete infrastructure and poor sanitation.

The populations mostly living in these slums are poor families. Therefore these populations and especially their children are most likely to fall sick.

Inhabitants in these slum areas lack fundamental resources and capabilities such as adequate sanitation, improved water supply, durable housing or adequate living space and exposing themselves to chronic illnesses.

Infectious diseases are all the more frequent and serious with children suffering from malnutrition and/or having no access to clean drinking water living in those areas.

That’s no doubt that maintaining of drainage systems in Sierra Leone is very difficult as most of the drainage systems are channeled to the slum areas.

Like every year, the first rains of the season send garbage flowing from drainage systems to these slum areas.

It happens when rain runoff flows through few municipal drainage and sweeps waste that has accumulated in the pipes and ditches into the slum areas and even into the Atlantic Ocean.

By embarking on roadsides ditch cleaning, are important conveyors of surface water and must be kept cleaned. In urbanizing watersheds, storage basins may be vital to preventing small storms from flooding buildings.

The determination of a community’s drainage system is based on what facilities need to be maintained in order to prevent damage to buildings in the future.