Assessment of water use and sanitation behavior in a rural area of Bangladesh

A health development project was established in a rural area of Bangladesh that entailed training village health promoters to provide health education and to motivate families to install tubewells and sanitary latrines. Follo wing a 2-y period of project implementation, the authors sought to assess k nowledge and practice of mothers and family members about use of safe water and household tubewells. A household survey in the project area was compar ed with a similar one in a nearby control area. Three-hundred households in each area were selected, and mothers were interviewed with a standard ques tionnaire. Significantly more mothers in the health development project are a (45.7%) used tubewell water for domestic purposes than in the control are a (32.8%). However, hygienic practices of mothers were inadequate, Sanitary latrines were present in less than 20% of households in both areas. Approx imately 97% of mothers and 78% of adult family members always used househol d latrines. However, the use of household latrines by children was low (26. 7%). There was no statistically significant difference in the use of househ old latrines between the project and control areas. The results showed an i mprovement in use of household tubewells in the project area; however, ther e was no improvement in sanitation practices of families in the project are a. Health education alone, without improvement of socioeconomic status, is not effective in changing behavior.