SUSTAINABILITY OF A WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE EDUCATION PROJECT IN RURAL BANGLADESH - A 5-YEAR FOLLOW-UP

An integrated water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WSH) education int ervention project was run by the international Centre for Diarrhoeal D isease Research, Bangladesh, over the period 1983-87. In the intervent ion area the project provided handpumps, pit latrines, and hygiene edu cation to about 800 households. The control population did not receive any interventions, but had access to the usual government and private WSH facilities. After 1987 no external support was provided to mainta in these provisions. A cross-sectional follow-up survey which was carr ied out in 1992, involved about 500 randomly selected households from the intervention and control areas. In 1992 about 82% of the pumps wer e still in good functional condition and of these, 94% had been functi oning well in 1987. Fewer latrines were functional in 1992 (64%) than at the end of 1987 (93%). In the former intervention area about 84% of the adults were using sanitary latrines in 1992 compared with only 7% in the control area. Knowledge related to disease transmission, howev er, was poor and similar in both areas. People claimed that they used the WSH facilities to improve the qualify of their lives. The prevalen ce of diarrhoeal diseases in the 1992 survey among the control populat ion was about twice that among those in the intervention area.