Effects of a Health Education Program on Water Treatment and Safe Storage, East Nile Locality, Khartoum State

Abstract

Water is one of the important requirements for human health and life. Safe and adequate water supply is a vital element to preserve human health, however access to clean water is limited in many developing countries. Household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) provides a solution, when employed correctly and consistently, for managing water safety at home, have been shown to be effective in improving the microbiological quality of drinking water. This is a pre- post quasi experimental community based study conducted in East Nile locality in the capital state of Khartoum in Sudan among 384 households from May 2018 to June 2020, to evaluate the effects of a health education program on water treatment and safe storage. A questionnaire was used to collect data pre and post health education, the data was analysed by using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS). The result revealed that artesian well was the commonest source of drinking water used by 81% of participants. Nearly all of households 99.5% transported the water from points of sources to their houses using barrels carried by donkeys while only small portion 0.5% used buckets. The proportion of households who stored drinking water containers close to potential source of contamination was significant decrease from (96.9 %) before health education to (1.8%) after health education, and cleaned the water containers with water and soap before storing water, was improved from (4.3%) before health education to (98.4%) after health education. Households who stored drinking water in a covered containers were high before health education (91.7%) and remained high after health education (99.0%). Before health education, 19.8% of households practiced home-based water treatment. Conversely 99.7% of the households practiced home-based water treatment at the end line of the programme which showed significant change compared with the baseline (P < .001). Overall, households’ drinking water handling practice .....