Author
Listed:
- Ghislaine Rosa
- Maria L Huaylinos
- Ana Gil
- Claudio Lanata
- Thomas Clasen
Abstract
Background: Household water treatment (HWT) can improve drinking water quality and prevent disease if used correctly and consistently by vulnerable populations. Over 1.1 billion people report treating their water prior to drinking it. These estimates, however, are based on responses to household surveys that may exaggerate the consistency and microbiological performance of the practice—key factors for reducing pathogen exposure and achieving health benefits. The objective of this study was to examine how HWT practices are actually performed by households identified as HWT users, according to international monitoring standards. Methods and Findings: We conducted a 6-month case study in urban (n = 117 households) and rural (n = 115 households) Peru, a country in which 82.8% of households report treating their water at home. We used direct observation, in-depth interviews, surveys, spot-checks, and water sampling to assess water treatment practices among households that claimed to treat their drinking water at home. While consistency of reported practices was high in both urban (94.8%) and rural (85.3%) settings, availability of treated water (based on self-report) at time of collection was low, with 67.1% and 23.0% of urban and rural households having treated water at all three sampling visits. Self-reported consumption of untreated water in the home among adults and children
Suggested Citation
Ghislaine Rosa & Maria L Huaylinos & Ana Gil & Claudio Lanata & Thomas Clasen, 2014.
"Assessing the Consistency and Microbiological Effectiveness of Household Water Treatment Practices by Urban and Rural Populations Claiming to Treat Their Water at Home: A Case Study in Peru,"
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-19, December.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pone00:0114997
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114997
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0114997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.