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Estimating the Scope of Household Water Treatment in Low- and Medium-Income Countries

For populations without reliable access to safe drinking water, household water treatment (HWT) provides a means of improving water quality and preventing disease. We extracted data on reported HWT practices from 67 national surveys and reports on the scope of HWT. An estimated 33.0% of the households (1.1 billion people) in these countries report treating their drinking water at home. The practice is widespread in the Western Pacific (66.8%) and Southeast Asia (45.4%) regions, and it is less common in the Eastern Mediterranean (13.6%) and Africa (18.2%). Boiling is the most dominant method with 21.0% of the study households (598 million people) using the method. Despite being at higher risk of waterborne disease because of lower coverage of improved water sources, African and rural households are less likely to practice HWT or use microbiologically adequate methods. Validation of the household surveys and further analysis of these data could help optimize HWT practices.

Received July 6, 2009. Accepted for publication October 26, 2009.

Acknowledgments:

We wish to acknowledge Measure DHS (www.measureghs.com) for their provision of the Demographic and Health Surveys datasets analyzed here. We also wish to acknowledge UNICEF for the provision of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (www.childinfo.org) and the World Bank for the provision of the Living Standards Measurement Study surveys (http://go.worldbank.org/IPLXWMCNJ0).

Financial support: This work was supported by a grant from Hindustan Unilever Ltd., which manufactures and sells household-based water treatment products.

Authors' addresses: Ghislaine Rosa, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, E-mail: ghislaine.rosa{at}lshtm.ac.uk. Thomas Clasen, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, E-mail: thomas.clasen{at}lshtm.ac.uk.

*Address correspondence to Thomas Clasen, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, North Courtyard, 3rd Floor, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK. E-mail: thomas.clasen{at}lshtm.ac.uk

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