Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions for Child Health

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions form a cornerstone of global efforts to reduce childhood morbidity and mortality. Contaminated drinking water, inadequate disposal of human waste and poor hand hygiene contribute to a cycle of enteric infections, growth faltering and undernutrition in early life. Interventions range from point-of-use water treatment and the installation of improved latrines to community-wide sanitation campaigns and handwashing promotion. Their impact on diarrhoeal disease, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and acute respiratory infections has been assessed across diverse rural and urban settings. Although basic household-level improvements often yield modest reductions in diarrhoea, scaling to safely managed water supplies and high-coverage sanitation systems under the Sustainable Development Goals framework is necessary to achieve substantial public-health returns. Integration of WASH with nutritional counselling and supplementation has shown added benefit for growth in some contexts, yet behavioural adherence and environmental contamination remain barriers. Emerging evidence highlights the need for more robust containment of faecal waste, sustained behaviour change and systems approaches that address socio-economic inequities, climate variability and infrastructural constraints. Practical applications include subsidy-supported latrine construction, water chlorination coupled with hygiene education, and community engagement models that centre local leadership and data-driven monitoring.

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Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions for Child Health publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions for child health across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH): Integrated public-health measures to provide safe drinking water, hygienic sanitation facilities and handwashing practices.

Enteropathogen: A microorganism (bacterial, viral or parasitic) that causes disease in the gastrointestinal tract.

Microbial source tracking (MST) markers: Genetic or biochemical indicators used to identify the origin (human or animal) of faecal contamination in environmental samples.

Disability-adjusted life-year (DALY): A metric combining years of life lost due to premature mortality and years lived with disability, used to quantify overall disease burden.

Cluster randomised trial: An experimental study design in which groups (clusters) of participants, rather than individuals, are randomly assigned to intervention or control arms to evaluate public-health measures.

References

1. Burden of disease attributable to unsafe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in domestic settings: a global analysis for selected adverse health outcomes. The Lancet (2023).
2. Effects of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions on detection of enteropathogens and host-specific faecal markers in the environment: a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health (2023).
3. Effects of water quality, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional interventions on diarrhoea and child growth in rural Bangladesh: a cluster randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Global Health (2018).