Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

The Millennium Development Goals call for reducing by half the proportion ofpeople without sustainable access to safe drinking water. This goal was adopted in largepart because clean water was seen as critical to fighting diarrheal disease, which kills 2million children annually. There is compelling evidence that provision of piped water andsanitation can substantially reduce child mortality. However, in dispersed ruralsettlements, providing complete piped water and sanitation infrastructure to householdsis expensive. Many poor countries have therefore focused instead on providingcommunity-level water infrastructure, such as wells. Various traditional child healthinterventions have been shown to be effective in fighting diarrhea. Among environmentalinterventions, handwashing and point-of-use water treatment both reduce diarrhea,although more needs to be learned about ways to encourage households to take up thesebehavior changes. In contrast, there is little evidence that providing community-levelrural water infrastructure substantially reduces diarrheal disease or that thisinfrastructure can be effectively maintained. Investments in communal waterinfrastructure short of piped water may serve other needs and may reduce diarrhea inparticular circumstances, but the case for prioritizing communal infrastructure provisionneeds to be made rather than assumed.