Written By: Shraddha Rupavate | Published : October 10, 2014 1:09 PM IST
According to a recent study, focusing on providing toilets or latrines in rural households is not the right solution for minimising exposure to faecal pathogens and preventing infectious diseases. The study, instead, highlights the need for increased efforts to improve sanitation for reducing exposure and gaining benefits.
Within the context of the India s Total Sanitation Campaign, to prevent diarrhoea, soil-transmitted helminth infection and malnutrition, the study is aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a rural sanitation intervention.
For the study, the team conducted a cluster-randomised trial in 100 rural villages in Odisha, India. They randomly assigned 50 villages to a particular hygiene intervention group and 50 villages to the control group. The villages in the intervention group had 4586 houses and a total of 24,969 people while the control group villages had 4894 households, with a population of 25,982 individuals. (Read: Unicef says 51% Indians do not use the toilet)
In the intervention group, the latrine coverage was increased from 9 per cent of households to 63 per cent, while in control group the increase was made form 8 percent to 12 percent in control villages.
Health surveillance data were from both intervention and control group. Data from 1437 households that had children younger than 5 years in the intervention group (1919 children younger than 5 years), and from 1465 households (1916 children younger than 5 years) in the control group was analysed for reported diarrhea. (Read: India is the world s open defecation capital)
According to the results, 7-day prevalence of reported diarrhoea in children younger than 5 years was 8.8 per cent in the intervention group and 9.1 percent in the control group (period prevalence ratio 0.97, 95 percent CI 0.83-1.12). 162 participants died in the intervention group (11 children younger than 5 years) and 151 died in the control group (13 children younger than 5 years). This indicates that increasing latrine coverage may not really help in reducing exposure to fecal pathogens and resulting diseases. What we need is better sanitation and awareness about hygiene.
Source: ANI
Photo source: Getty images
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