Dramatic Reduction in Diarrhoeal Diseases through Implementation of Cost-Effective Household Drinking Water Treatment Systems in Makwane Village, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Resoketswe Charlotte Moropeng, Phumudzo Budeli, Lizzy Mpenyana-Monyatsi and Maggy Ndombo Benteke Momba
Additional contact information
Resoketswe Charlotte Moropeng: Department of Environmental, Water and Earth Sciences, Arcadia Campus, Tshwane University of Technology, P/B X 680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Phumudzo Budeli: Department of Environmental, Water and Earth Sciences, Arcadia Campus, Tshwane University of Technology, P/B X 680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Lizzy Mpenyana-Monyatsi: Department of Environmental, Water and Earth Sciences, Arcadia Campus, Tshwane University of Technology, P/B X 680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Maggy Ndombo Benteke Momba: Department of Environmental, Water and Earth Sciences, Arcadia Campus, Tshwane University of Technology, P/B X 680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: The main purpose of this study was to implement cost-effective household water treatment systems in every household of Makwane Village for the reduction of diarrhoeal diseases. These household water treatment systems were constructed with locally available materials and consisted of the biosand zeolite-silver impregnated granular clay filters and the silver-impregnated porous pot filters. During the study period (April 2015 to September 2015), the entire village had 88 households with a population size of 480. Prior to the implementation, a survey was conducted and results revealed that 75% (360/480) of the Makwane residents suffered from diarrhoeal disease and the majority of the cases were reported in children that were less than five years of age. Out of the 480 participants, 372 (77.5%) from 70 households accepted the installation of the systems (intervention group) and 108 (25.5%) from 18 households were reluctant to use the systems (the control group). To date, in the intervention group, only 3.8% (14/372) of participants reported cases of diarrhoea. In the control group, 57.4% (62/108) participants reported cases of diarrhoea and most of the episodes of diarrhoea were reported in children of less than five years old (85%), followed by the group aged ≥56 years (75%). The findings of the current study unequivocally demonstrated that the BSZ-SICG and SIPP filters were able to reduce the incidence of diarrhoea by 96.2%. These findings further demonstrate the importance of household water treatment systems (HWTS) interventions in rural areas to bring about meaningful reductions in diarrhoeal diseases by providing safe potable water.

Keywords: diarrhoeal disease; HWTS implementation; water and sanitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/3/410/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/3/410/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:3:p:410-:d:133675

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().