Perception of drinking water safety and factors influencing acceptance and sustainability of a water quality intervention in rural southern India

BMC Public Health

Research

Venkata Raghava Mohan¹  Guru Nagarajan²  Gagandeep Kang³  Mark Rohit Francis³  Rajiv Sarkar³  Vinohar Balraj⁴ 

[1]Department of Community Health, Christian Medical College, 632002, Vellore, TN, India

[2]Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Christian Medical College, 632002, Vellore, TN, India

[3]Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College, 632004, Vellore, TN, India

[4]Society for Applied Studies, No 14, Natteri Krishnamachari Street, Krishna Nagar, 632001, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India

关键词: Perceptions;    Unsafe water;    Water quality intervention;    Low income setting;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-015-1974-0

 received in 2015-02-16, accepted in 2015-06-25,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAcceptance and long-term sustainability of water quality interventions are pivotal to realizing continued health benefits. However, there is limited research attempting to understand the factors that influence compliance to or adoption of such interventions.MethodsEight focus group discussions with parents of young children - including compliant and not compliant households participating in an intervention study, and three key-informant interviews with village headmen were conducted between April and May 2014 to understand perceptions on the effects of unsafe water on health, household drinking water treatment practices, and the factors influencing acceptance and sustainability of an ongoing water quality intervention in a rural population of southern India.ResultsThe ability to recognize health benefits from the intervention, ease of access to water distribution centers and the willingness to pay for intervention maintenance were factors facilitating acceptance and sustainability of the water quality intervention. On the other hand, faulty perceptions on water treatment, lack of knowledge about health hazards associated with drinking unsafe water, false sense of protection from locally available water, resistance to change in taste or odor of water and a lack of support from male members of the household were important factors impeding acceptance and long term use of the intervention.ConclusionThis study highlights the need to effectively involve communities at important stages of implementation for long term success of water quality interventions. Timely research on the factors influencing uptake of water quality interventions prior to implementation will ensure greater acceptance and sustainability of such interventions in low income settings.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Francis et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.