Summary Monday January 29th
Orlando Hernandez - Tuesday 30 January 2007
Some of the issues brought up can be formulated as questions and others as affirmations, regardless of whether we agree with them or not.
1. Should we measure the percent of households which consume safe water after treating and storing it correctly provided that they do not have constant access to a protected water source?
2. What would be the denominator for households not having constant access to a protected water source? How should protected water source be defined, particularly in cases when households are tapping water from wells, but the well water is not of good quality for consumption and it merits treatment at the household level?
3. If there is no consensus yet on proper water storage to avoid recontamination, do we leave the indicator on percent of households practicing effective managing water as is? Should we not arrive at consensus on what proper water storage is at this point? Is there sufficient evidence to determine what that practice should be/would be in different settings?
4. Should we be concerned with who in the household consumes the properly treated and stored water?
5. Current indicator(s) may need to be revised once an easy to use water quality test is developed.
6. Donors continue to be interested in single indicators at the behavioral outcome level, even though they recognize that there may be other indicators that are useful for program managers for monitoring or evaluating their interventions. Behavioral determinants or time elapsed since adoption may belong to the later category of indicators.
Trying to respond
Matthias Saladin - Wednesday 31 January 2007
Dear Orlando,
I will be trying to respond to the very good questions you formulated:
1. We probably should measure the percentage of households treating and storing water correctly at the household level, independent of what level of service they have. Even in cities with 24/7 service level of drinking water, treating the same at the household level would improve the health risk situation over actual levels in most developing countries.
2. Again, we may only focus on the fact if a family treats and stores water at the household level correctly, without bothering about protected sources or not and 24/7 pressure in the network.
3. I think we should be able to define what proper water storage is, especially with the input of expert. As a start, we may define it as storing water in any vessel which makes it unlikely for the water to get in touch with hands. (But than again, we haven't discussed the issue of the final consumption vessel, which often strongly influences final drinking water quality - we are currently accompanying a study regarding this issue).
4. As people, we should be concerned about the fact if everyone in a family consumes the treated water. But for practical reasons, I would suggest to retrieve data at the family level and assume that consumption patterns within a family does not vary significanty - knowing that this has to be proven first.
5. The availability of a easy, simple and cheap water quality test will change the picture. However, I don't expect this to happen within the next 3 years - but the experts in that field will know this better.
6. Also as implementer, I am interested in single indicators at the behaviour outcome level.
