Acceptability and Effectiveness of Household Water Treatment in Reducing Diarrhea Among Under Five Children

Haramaya Unversity

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 1

Conditions: Acute Diarrhoea

Treatments: Other: household water treatment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01376440

SGS13/15/11

Details and patient eligibility

About

The Millenium development goals (MDGs) call for reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. This goal was adopted in large part because safe drinking water has been seen as critical to fighting diarrheal disease. Source protection is considered the main intervention area to achieve this goal. However, research worldwide that has shown that even drinking water which is safe at the source is subject to frequent and extensive fecal contamination during collection, storage and use in the home. This contamination is through the introduction of cups, dippers or hands, contamination by flies, cockroaches, and rats. Even piped water supplies of adequate microbial quality can pose infectious disease risks if they become contaminated due to unsanitary collection, storage conditions and practices within households.

To reduce this problem, point-of-use water treatment has been advocated as a means to substantially decrease the global burden of diarrhea and to contribute to the MDGs. However, research indicates that there are many unanswered questions around Household water treatment (HWT) that require small or medium scale epidemiological studies and randomized controlled trials, especially with regard to effectiveness, acceptability and identifying suitable target populations. Some of the most urgent questions to be resolved are:(1) How much of the currently cited disease reduction of HWT is due to bias? (2) What is the effect of HWT on nutritional status (weight gain and growth)?(3) At which populations should HWT be targeted? (4) Is it acceptable and sustainable in poor communities where the risk of diarrheal disease is high.

hypothesis: Do household water treatment with chlorine reduce diarrhea among underfive children? hypothesis: Do household water treatment with chlorine acceptable in the community?

Enrollment: 845 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 1 to 59 months old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All children under five years of age in the randomly selected clusters of Kersa district

Exclusion criteria

• seriously sick children in the randomly selected clusters of Kersa district

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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845 participants in 2 patient groups

Household water treatment

Experimental group

Description:

household water treatment with 1.25% sodium hypochlorite

Treatment:

Other: household water treatment

control

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual practice (the use of "Jerrican" for water storage, which is considered as safe storage)