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A new strategy for waterborne disease prevention

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conference contribution
posted on 2018-02-12, 15:08 authored by Robert E. Quick, Eric D. Mintz, Jeremy Sobel, Paul S. Mead, Fred M. Reiff, Robert V. Tauxe
In many parts of the developing world, drinking water is collected from unsafe sources and is further contaminated during storage in household vessels. We have developed a simple, inexpensive system for point-of-use disinfection and storage of water which has 3 elements: for disinfection, a sodium hypochlorite solution produced from water and salt using appropriate technology; for safe storage, a 20-litre plastic vessel with a narrow mouth, lid, and spigot (referred to hereafter as the special vessel); and community education to ensure proper use of this system and to teach populations about the association between contaminated water and disease (Mintz, 1995). A field test of this system in El Alto, Bolivia, demonstrated a high level of acceptance among impoverished Aymara Indian families (Quick, 1996). Stored water in households that used the system had lower levels of contamination with E. coli than water in households that used their traditional storage systems. A second field test among vendors in the markets of Guatemala City, Guatemala, showed that there were lower levels of contamination with fecal coliform bacteria in samples of stored water and beverages from vendors using this system than from vendors not using this system (Sobel, 1997). Two field trials have been conducted in the past 3 years to test the effectiveness of this system in preventing diarrhea and its sustainability on a large scale.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Published in

WEDC Conference

Citation

QUICK, R.E. ... et al, 1997. A new strategy for waterborne disease prevention. IN: Pickford, J. et al. (eds). Water and sanitation for all - Partnerships and innovations: Proceedings of the 23rd WEDC International Conference, Durban, South Africa, 1-5 September 1997, pp.340-342.

Publisher

© WEDC, Loughborough University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

1997

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Other identifier

WEDC_ID:11744

Language

  • en

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    WEDC 23rd International Conference

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