Water and sanitation interventions to control diarrheal disease in rural China

Abstract

To evaluate diarrheal disease control effects of various water and sanitation interventions, a comprehensive search strategy was developed to identify all peer-reviewed papers relating to water and sanitation intervention studies in China. All published studies since 1980 on water and sanitation interventions to reduce diarrheal disease in China were analyzed using meta-analysis. Fixed-effects and random-effects models were used to calculate the summarized relative risk of all included studies. The results show that water and sanitation interventions can be classified into four types: improved water supply; latrine construction intervention; health education and behavior intervention; and multiple interventions. All of these intervention studies were found to reduce the risks of diarrhea illness. This study, which analyzed high control effects of water and sanitation intervention to prevent diarrheal disease, revealed that water improvements and sanitation interventions in China played an important role in reducing diarrhea illness. The diarrhea study concluded that the intervention of water and sanitation in China must involve the whole population as it aims to build a more comprehensive intervention system.