Institutionalizing community led action for sanitary surveillance (CLASS) through launch of a reward scheme

In India, the national goal is to provide every rural person with adequate water for drinking and cooking on a sustainable basis. Water supply for drinking and cooking should maintain sufficient quantity and quality. Access to drinking water supply alone is not enough to reduce health problems unless quality is ensured. For instance, bacteriological contamination of drinking water can cause child mortality despite ample water quantity. Reliability of drinking water quality is equally important at both the production and consumption levels. Under the national drinking water supply programme, we have developed and implemented the Community Led Action for Sanitary Surveillance (CLASS) approach to trigger remedial measures for improved access to safe drinking water. We used a World Bank funded reward scheme to motivate communities to adopt CLASS in 35 villages in Uttarakhand, India. We found motivated local self-government members effectively facilitated CLASS, so the approach has potential to become replicable.