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Access to Water and Awareness About the Unsafe Water in Rural Bangladesh

Fahim Subhan Chowdhury
Development Research Initiative (dRi), Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Sojib Bin Zaman*
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Shakeel Ahmed Ibne Mahmood
Department of Community Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, University of Newcastle, Australia.

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Introduction: Access to drinking water is a fundamental concern for many countries, including Bangladesh. Drinking of unsafe water might result to cause diseases and illness which heightens the economic burden for every one by increasing the treatment costs and work days lost. In Bangladesh, rural households coupled with the lack of safe water, also faces water contamination with arsenic and other pollutants.

Objective: This study explores the status of the rural people in accessing the water for households. It also determines their knowledge regarding the contaminated water.

Methodology: The current study used retrospective data from Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee’s (BRAC) Research and Evaluation Division’s baseline survey which was initiated under the ‘water, sanitation and hygiene’ program. Data was taken from 16,052 households between November 2006 and June 2007. Descriptive statistics were used to report the study findings.

Results: Approximately 67% of the households had a permanent water source and majority had their deep tube well. A major proportion of the household respondent (70%) identified the method properly to purify polluted water. About 41% households used tube well as a source of water for daily purposes, i.e., drinking, cooking, washing utensils, and bathing. Majority (85%) of the households were found to pay willingly for a good source of water. Households with the non-governmental organization (NGO) membership were willing to pay even more for the safe water as compared to households without NGO membership.

Conclusion: Respondents had considerable knowledge and awareness concerning the contaminated water. The association of NGO membership and level of awareness presented in this study should be of particular interest to the policy makers.

Keywords: Water, Health, Awareness, Bangladesh, Rural

Location: In Rural Bangladesh

Start Date: 00-11-2006

End Date: 00-06-2007

Program Area: Crop-Soil-Water Management

Commodity: Water pollution, Awareness

Objectives:

A large number of deaths and illness takes place both globally and in Bangladesh due to inadequate knowledge of safe water or inaccessibility to drinking water. Adequate knowledge of drinking water and awareness to use a good source of water can be a useful public health intervention which can avert many health related problems globally. The current study aims to determine the rural household’s level of access to a drinking water source during different seasons (dry and rainy) of a year and assess household’s awareness and knowledge about safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh.

Methodology:

Study Area and Data Source

This study uses a retrospective data collected from Research and Evaluation Division (RED) of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). With an objective to achieve Millennium Development Goals target 4 and 7 of reducing child mortality and halving the number of people who are devoid of safe drinking water by 2015, BRAC with the technical and financial support from the Netherlands initiated the ‘Water, Sanitation and Hygiene’ Program in 2006.

A baseline survey under the WASH program was carried out from November 2006 to June 2007 to assess the current situation of the water and sanitation status of the households. Data from the 16,052 households were taken from 32 sub-districts purposively based on geographical variations. One educated (at least passed the secondary level of education) adult member of each household was interviewed. Equal number of males and females were included.

The sample size estimation to initiate the household (HH) surveys adopted a multi-stage sampling technique where each sub-district was studied as a cluster. The estimated sample size was allocated among thirty villages of each sub-district where the interval-sampling technique was applied in selecting the villages. Villages under a sub-district were listed in the first stage, while within a sub-district were divided by 30 to compute the interval size in the next stage. The initial village was picked up randomly from the first interval where the rest were selected based on interval size. Apart from this method additional seventeen documents were retrieved from the databases of several national and international peer-reviewed journals from 1996-2017 timeline.

Variables and Measurements

Data was collected on “Access and status of water supply, sanitation, hygiene related knowledge” amongst the inhabitants. Spot observation by the enumerator was conducted in gathering information on sanitation facility, and water source which were nearby to a household. In addition to the above information, data regarding household’s willingness to pay for a drinking water and facility for hygiene sanitation were also collected. Presence of membership card to an HH was used to confirm the NGO’s accession. Water has been considered as safe when it is drinkable and has been collected from the deep tube well in this study. We have used an awareness index to identify the awareness status. This study took into account of 14 different independent disease and health awareness variables for building the awareness status. The disease variables included respondent’s awareness about having proper knowledge of arsenic diseases and other diseases caused by polluted water. Safe water awareness was defined based on the ability of respondent’s knowledge on how to purify the polluted water and prevent water borne diseases.

Data Management and Analysis

Skilled data operators were used for data entry, and collected data weas stored in a SQL server. Inconsistent data was cross-checked and verified by the data management team. For creating an awareness index, standardization of the variables was considered so that values have a mean zero and standard deviation. This study created three different quartiles to find out the awareness index and grouped the participants as low awareness, medium awareness, and high awareness. Descriptive statistics were used to present the study findings. Stata version 13 was used to execute all the analyses.

Source of Information: J Med Res Innov. 2018;2(1):e000088.

Article Link (Online Journal): DOI: 10.15419/jmri.88

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

Respondents had considerable knowledge and awareness of the contaminated water. Most of the respondents were willing to pay for a good source of water. Therefore, both governmental organizations and NGOs should initiate projects related to install a safe water source for rural households. These households are most likely able to pay the cost of installation on a monthly payment basis.

Knowledge Management: Journal