Background: While water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions can reduce diarrheal disease, many large-scale trials have not found the expected health gains for young children in low-resource settings. Evidence-based guidance is needed to improve interventions and remove barriers to diarrheal disease reduction.
Objectives: We aimed to estimate how sensitive WASH intervention effectiveness was to underlying contextual and intervention factors in the WASH Benefits (WASH-B) Bangladesh cluster-randomized controlled trial.
Unlabelled: Increasing demand for poultry has spurred poultry production in low- and middle-income countries like Mozambique. Poultry may be an important source of foodborne, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria to consumers in settings with limited water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure. The Chicken Exposures and Enteric Pathogens in Children Exposed through Environmental Pathways (ChEEP ChEEP) study was conducted in Maputo City, Mozambique from 2019 to 2021 to quantify enteric pathogen exposures along the supply chain for commercial and local (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Chickens are an important source of animal protein, nutrition, and income in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). They are also a major reservoir of enteropathogens that contribute to the burden of illnesses among children. Food systems present a risk for transmission of enteropathogens from poultry to humans, but there is a lack of population-level data on the pattern of purchase, ownership, and consumption of live chickens and their products in LMICs to better characterize that risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Increasing childhood vaccination, family planning, healthcare access, and women's empowerment are targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Barriers to healthcare access impede vaccination; tackling goals holistically could create larger gains than siloed efforts. We studied Nepal, Senegal, and Zambia to test the association between childhood vaccinations and other SDG indicators to identify clustered deprivations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are important drivers of the global burden of disease, and their impact is exacerbated during outbreaks. Directives to practice handwashing and physical distancing may be impractical for people that have limited access to WASH resources. In this study, which took place during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore the relationship between control measures for global health crises and water, sanitation, and hygiene insecurity, with implications for other infectious diseases and future health emergencies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Food Microbiol
January 2025
The burden of foodborne disease due to the consumption of animal-sourced foods is substantial in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Open air markets, while providing fresh and affordable foods, often have unhygienic practices that may contribute to contamination during the slaughter and processing of chicken meat. This study examines whether and how the common practice of rinse water (stored water used for rinsing broiler carcasses during processing) reuse leads to accumulation of pathogens, with potential cross contamination of chicken meat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite some progress, universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) by 2030-a remit of Sustainable Development Goal 6-remains a distant prospect in many countries. Policy-makers and implementers of the WASH sector are challenged to track a new path. This research aimed to identify core orienting themes of the sector, as legacies of past processes, which can provide insights for its future.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild exposure to animal feces and associated enteropathogens contribute to a significant burden of disease in low- and middle-income countries. However, there are no standardized, validated survey-based approaches to enable accurate assessment of child exposure to zoonotic enteropathogens. We developed and validated a survey-based measure of exposure, the fecal-oral child exposure to zoonotic enteropathogens Index (the FECEZ Enteropathogens Index).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWater supply and sanitation are essential household services frequently shared in resource-poor settings. Shared sanitation can increase the risk of enteric pathogen transmission due to suboptimal cleanliness of facilities used by large numbers of individuals. It also can potentially increase the risk of respiratory disease transmission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the worsening impacts of climate change. Two climate factors-temperature and rainfall uncertainties-influence the risk of childhood diarrhea, which remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries. They create a conducive environment for diarrhea-causing pathogens and overwhelm environmental prevention measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Promotion of facial cleanliness is recommended for the elimination of blinding trachoma, largely because of observational studies that have found an association between various measures of facial uncleanliness and trachoma. However, when a field grader assesses both facial cleanliness and trachoma, associations may be biased. Assessment of photographs of the face and conjunctiva by masked graders may provide a less biased estimate of the relationship between facial cleanliness and trachoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnteric viral pathogens are associated with a significant burden of childhood morbidity and mortality. We investigated the relationship between viral pathogens and child growth among under-5 children. We analyzed data from 5572/22,567 children enrolled in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study across seven study sites (2007-2011).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNew vaccines, technologies, and regulations, alongside increased demand for vaccines, all require prioritization and coordination from key players within the vaccine sector. Inter-agency Coordinating Committees (ICC) support decision-making and coordination at the national-level and act as key drivers for sustainable improvements in vaccination programming. We utilized a previous qualitative case study, which investigated critical success factors for high routine immunization coverage in Zambia from 2000-2018, specifically to study the Zambian ICC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: To accurately assess evidence from environmental and public health field trials, context and implementation details of the intervention must be weighed with trial results; yet these details are under and inconsistently reported for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), limiting the external validity of the evidence.
Methods: To quantify the level of reporting of context and implementation in WASH evaluations, we conducted a scoping review of the 40 most cited evaluations of WASH interventions published in the last 10 years (2012-2022). We applied criteria derived from a review of existing reporting guidance from other sectors including healthcare and implementation science.
Objectives: Community health workers are essential to front-line health outreach throughout low-income and middle-income countries, including programming for early childhood immunisation. Understanding how community health workers are engaged for successful early childhood vaccination among countries who showed success in immunisation coverage would support evidence-based policy guidance across contexts.
Design: We employed a multiple case study design using qualitative research methods.
Introduction: Despite evidence for the efficacy and effectiveness of hand hygiene in reducing the transmission of infectious diseases, there are gaps in global normative guidance around hand hygiene in community settings. The goal of this review is to systematically retrieve and synthesise available evidence on hand hygiene in community settings across four areas: (1) effective hand hygiene; (2) minimum requirements; (3) behaviour change and (4) government measures.
Methods And Analysis: This protocol entails a two-phased approach to identify relevant studies for multiple related systematic reviews.
Environ Health Perspect
November 2023
Background: Small-scale poultry production is widespread and increasing in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Exposure to enteropathogens in poultry feces increases the hazard of human infection and related sequela, and the burden of disease due to enteric infection in children y in particular is substantial. Yet, the containment and management of poultry-associated fecal waste in informal settings in LMICs is largely unregulated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium are common intestinal protozoan parasites that contribute to a high burden of childhood morbidity and mortality. Our study quantified the association between intestinal protozoan parasites and child anthropometric outcomes among children under-5.
Methods: We analyzed data from 7,800 children enrolled in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS) across seven study sites that were positive for intestinal protozoan parasites between December 2007 and March 2011.
Objective: Senegal has demonstrated catalytic improvements in national coverage rates for early childhood vaccination, despite lower development assistance for childhood vaccines in Senegal compared with other low-income and lower-middle income countries. Understanding factors associated with historical changes in childhood vaccine coverage in Senegal, as well as heterogeneities across its 14 regions, can highlight effective practices that might be adapted to improve vaccine coverage elsewhere.
Design: Childhood vaccination coverage rates, demographic information and health system characteristics were identified from Senegal's Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Senegal national reports for years 2005-2019.
Objectives: Vaccination averts an estimated 2-3 million deaths annually. Although vaccine coverage improvements across Africa and South Asia have remained below global targets, several countries have outperformed their peers with significant increases in coverage. The objective of this study was to examine these countries' vaccination programmes and to identify and describe critical success factors that may have supported these improvements.
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