Abstract
Waterborne diseases account for 1.5 million deaths a year globally, particularly affecting children in low-income households in subtropical areas. It is one of the most enduring and economically devastating biological hazards in our society today. The World Health Organization Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (health-EDRM) Framework highlights the importance of primary prevention against biological hazards across all levels of society. The framework encourages multi-sectoral coordination and lessons sharing for community risk resilience. A narrative review, conducted in March 2021, identified 88 English-language articles published between January 2000 and March 2021 examining water, sanitation, and hygiene primary prevention interventions against waterborne diseases in resource-poor settings. The literature identified eight main interventions implemented at personal, household and community levels. The strength of evidence, the enabling factors, barriers, co-benefits, and alternative measures were reviewed for each intervention. There is an array of evidence available across each intervention, with strong evidence supporting the effectiveness of water treatment and safe household water storage. Studies show that at personal and household levels, interventions are effective when applied together. Furthermore, water and waste management will have a compounding impact on vector-borne diseases. Mitigation against waterborne diseases require coordinated, multi-sectoral governance, such as building sanitation infrastructure and streamlined waste management. The review showed research gaps relating to evidence-based alternative interventions for resource-poor settings and showed discrepancies in definitions of various interventions amongst research institutions, creating challenges in the direct comparison of results across studies.
Highlights
PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Medline, and Scopus databases were searched in March 2021 using the MeSH key words: water, sanitation, hygiene, WASH, waterborne disease, intervention, prevention, primary prevention, measures, health-EDRM, unclean water, inadequate safe drinking water, population and community Boolean operators combined the key words by similarity of definition into a search term:
WBD-associated health risks will remain an ongoing biological hazard to the rapidly globalized world, which highlights the importance of sustainable strategies
In order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030 (SDG) by 2030 [16], multi-sectoral, multi-level capacity building will be needed for sustainable health-EDRM practices, with research for the effectiveness of alternative methods to WBD prevention in low resource settings
Summary
A literature search on studies with interventions designed to reduce transmission of WBD was conducted.2.1. A literature search on studies with interventions designed to reduce transmission of WBD was conducted. PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, Medline, and Scopus databases were searched in March 2021 using the MeSH key words: water, sanitation, hygiene, WASH, waterborne disease, intervention, prevention, primary prevention, measures, health-EDRM, unclean water, inadequate safe drinking water, population and community Boolean operators combined the key words by similarity of definition into a search term: ((water AND sanitation AND hygiene) OR WASH) AND (waterborne disease) AND (intervention OR prevention OR primary prevention OR measures OR health-EDRM) AND The search was limited to human studies in international peer-reviewed journals, online reports and electronic books published in English. The search included any studies relating to any WBDs, with no distinction between causative agent or symptoms. Their bibliographies were checked for further relevant publications. To obtain the most relevant literature for this review, the titles and abstracts were screened against the inclusion and exclusion criteria
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