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High-risk water and sanitation practices: evidence of underreporting from eight countries

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conference contribution
posted on 2018-02-12, 15:11 authored by Sridhar Vedachalam, Luke MacDonald, Easmon Otupiri, Emmanuel K. Nakua, Kellogg Schwab
Water and sanitation indicators in the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) failed to capture high-risk practices such as unimproved water consumption and open defecation undertaken on a regular basis. In conjunction with local partners, we used a mobile platform to implement representative randomized household surveys in eight countries across Asia and Africa (n=245,054) to quantify the presence and magnitude of such underreporting. Our study identified the use of high-risk practices as a regular option to be greater than their use as the main option. Across the study areas, this consistent underreporting amounted to 26 million (unimproved water) and 50 million (open defecation) people not being targeted for suitable policy interventions. A deeper analysis of Ghana shows poor and rural households are more likely to engage in high-risk practices. Current metrics inflate water and sanitation progress, and need to be adapted for the complex world we live in.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Published in

WEDC Conference

Citation

VEDACHALAM, S. ... et al, 2016. High-risk water and sanitation practices: evidence of underreporting from eight countries. IN: Shaw, R.J. (ed). Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all: Proceedings of the 39th WEDC International Conference, Kumasi, Ghana, 11-15 July 2016, Briefing paper 2445, 6pp.

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© WEDC, Loughborough University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Other identifier

WEDC_ID:22522

Language

  • en

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    WEDC 39th International Conference

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