Lessons learned from fifteen drinking water treatment program evaluations in Haiti

Providing safe drinking water is a priority in emergencies. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti and subsequent cholera outbreak thus led to the implementation of numerous point-of-collection (PoC) and point-of-use (PoU) water treatment programs. We propose to present a synthesis of lessons learned from fifteen evaluations conducted in Haiti between 2010 and 2016, including four PoC and eleven PoU water treatment programs, to better understand which strategies have helped make programs effective and sustainable. Overall, it appears that PoU water treatment technologies were more effective than PoC water treatment programs in the Haitian context. Additionally, evaluation results suggest that programs achieving sustained effectiveness were those that:1) promoted technologies that were effective and familiar to beneficiaries; 2) had reliable supply chains for water treatment products; 3) worked with local partners; and, 4) included monitoring.