Assessing the impact of clean water and sanitation on nutrition

The results of a new Cochrane systematic review on the links between undernutrition and WASH interventions led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine were published on 31 July.

In low-income countries an estimated 165 million children under the age of five years suffer from chronic undernutrition causing them to be short in height and 52 million children suffer from acute undernutrition causing them to be very thin. Poor growth in early life increases the risks of illness and death in childhood. The two immediate causes of childhood undernutrition are inadequate dietary intake and infectious diseases such as diarrhoea. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions are frequently implemented to reduce infectious diseases; this review evaluates the effect that WASH interventions may have on nutrition outcomes in children.

The review includes evidence from randomised and non-randomised interventions designed to (i) improve the microbiological quality of drinking water or protect the microbiological quality of water prior to consumption; (ii) introduce new or improved water supply or improve distribution; (iii) introduce or expand the coverage and use of facilities designed to improve sanitation; or (iv) promote handwashing with soap after defecation and disposal of child faeces, and prior to preparing and handling food, or a combination of these interventions, in children aged under 18 years.

The researchers identified 14 studies of such interventions involving 22,241 children at baseline and nutrition outcome data for 9,469 children. Meta-analyses of the evidence from the cluster-randomised trials suggests that WASH interventions confer a small benefit on growth in children under five years of age. While potentially important, this conclusion is based on relatively short-term studies, none of which is of high methodological quality, and should therefore be treated with caution. There are several large, robust studies underway in low-income country settings that should provide evidence to inform these findings.

The full systematic review is available on the Cochrane library here.

A briefing note produced by WaterAid, SHARE and LSHTM providing an overview of WASH and undernutrition is available here.

Commentary by Lawrence Haddad is also available here.