Title:
Comparison of household water treatment methods in low-and middle-income countries under the perspective of a human rights based approach and their applicability in camps for displaced populations
Authors:
Nientiet, Sonja
Place:
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Publisher:
KIT - Royal Tropical Institute [etc.]
Year:
2013
PAGE:
vii, 62
Language:
En
Subject:
Health and Poverty
Keywords:
household water treatment, refugee camps, human rights
Abstract:
There never have been so many displaced people as today with 42.5 million worldwide. The United Nation high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) has 25.9 million refugees, and internally displaced people under its mandate, living in more than 120 UNHCR- camps around the world. Diarrhoeal diseases are one of the three most common causes of morbidities in refugee camp settings. Poor water quality is one of the main transmission routes for diarrhoeal disease. Thus, providing the camp population with safe drinking water is an important factor to influence health. There are a variety of methods to improve water quality at the point of consumption. Access to safe potable water is a human right and the aim of this thesis is to evaluate whether the different forms of household water treatment (HWT) can ensure this right within a refugee population. This thesis presents a review of recent implementations/evaluations of household water treatment. An adaptation of the “right to health” framework is applied to research to what extend the different point-of-use treatments fulfil a human rights based approach. The aspects of availability, accessibility, acceptance and quality with further detailed characteristics are used to extract relevant data from the selected publications. For this thesis biosand and ceramic filtration, chlorination, flocculation/disinfection and solar disinfection (SODIS) as methods for household water treatment were examined. None of the 23 examined publications with 36 study arms had data covering all four aspects of the human rights based approach. Data on willingness/affordability to spend money for household water treatment and on costs of the different treatment options was only available in 13% and 26% of the publications respectively. Data on the availability of the HWT on the local market was published in 35% of the studies. Acceptance showed big heterogeneity in definition across the different publications: 35% of the studies reported data on non-health benefits, which was linked to acceptance, and 69% of the studies reported other data to argue for acceptance. Four indicators were used to look for quality aspects studies reported on: E. coli reduction (56%), adequate chlorine level (82%), turbidity reduction (28%), and impact on diarrhoea (87%). In order to recommend a form of household water treatment to be used in refugee camps, more studies are needed that have evaluated interventions using the human rights based approach, as for too many studies relevant data is missing. More pointof- use treatment research needs to be conducted in emergency settings, and should have an implementation and follow-up period of more than six months. Local availability of products to treat water at point of use needs to be researched to make a long-term uptake feasible. Data on the different water quality and disease aspects should be measured to monitor the implementation and impact. A discussion, what acceptance means, how to define and to look for it, seems to be imperative. The heterogeneity of the definition of this term or using adherence, or compliance as analogy to acceptance does not seem to be helpful since accepting a new water treatment at home is related with a behaviour change. Such empirical data needs to be carefully included when examining household water treatment.
Organization:
KIT - Royal Tropical Institute
,
VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Institute:
KIT (Royal Tropical Institute)
Department:
Development, Policy and Practice
Country:
Germany
Region:
Europe
Training:
Master of Public Health
Category:
research
Right:
© 2013 Nientiet
Document type:
Thesis/dissertation
File:
vnZ5BRWHz4_20171119132018679.pdf