Does Clean Water Actually Matter?

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-08-18 12:16:00 UTC
Topics:

(Photo Credit: Julien Harneis)

Anywhere between 3-28% of childhood illness in the developing world is cause by lack of access to clean water. Diarrheal diseases kill kids, and dirty water spreads diarrhea. The obvious solution to this problem is technology to make water clean. Unfortunately, providing that technology is expensive and doesn't actually seem to improve kids' health.

A recent article in the Public Library of Science Journal of Medicine found that solar disinfection technology, one of the most commonly promoted methods of improving water quality, doesn't always reduce diarrhea in children. It's a really dense article, so be glad I read it and you don't have to. (unless you're a water and sanitation expert, in which case please read it and comment here if I am misunderstanding.) It looks at several recent studies on the use of solar disinfection.

They start by citing the following background data: Improving the water supply is an expensive way to improve health. Hand washing is a good, cheap, way to reduce diarrhea but it's very hard to get people to actually wash their hands. Once you stop promoting handwashing, people lose the habit. And studies of solar water disinfection in both India and Kenya found that it has a significant impact on reducing diarrhea in kids.

The article then looks at a recent study in rural Brazil of an intervention to promote solar water disinfection. It found no impact from the intervention on diarrhea. None. This could be because their promotion didn't work - only 32% of households actually used the solar water disinfection, despite the promotion. Or it could be because dirty water wasn't the cause of childhood diarrhea in Brazil.

Studies like this are frustrating.  Even problems as simple as sick kids and dirty water turn out to have deeply complicated solutions.

Alanna Shaikh
PREVIOUS STORY:
Failing Our Peacekeepers
NEXT STORY:
Campaign about Apple Factories in China Gains Wide and Diverse Support

COMMENTS (2)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.