The impact of a school-based water supply and treatment, hygiene, and sanitation programme on pupil diarrhoea: a cluster-randomized trial

SUMMARY The impact of improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) access on mitigating illness is well documented, although impact of school-based WASH on school-aged children has not been rigorously explored. We conducted a cluster-randomized trial in Nyanza Province, Kenya to assess the impact of a school-based WASH intervention on diarrhoeal disease in primary-school pupils. Two study populations were used: schools with a nearby dry season water source and those without. Pupils attending ‘water-available’ schools that received hygiene promotion and water treatment (HP&WT) and sanitation improvements showed no difference in period prevalence or duration of illness compared to pupils attending control schools. Those pupils in schools that received only the HP&WT showed similar results. Pupils in ‘water-scarce’ schools that received a water-supply improvement, HP&WT and sanitation showed a reduction in diarrhoea incidence and days of illness. Our study revealed mixed results on the impact of improvements to school WASH improvements on pupil diarrhoea.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Epidemiology and Infection

• Publication date

  2013-05-24

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1017/S0950268813001118PMID 23702047PMCID PMC9151148
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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