For decades, implementers have applied water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and nutrition-based interventions—alone and in a variety of combinations—to address diarrheal disease and stunting among infants and young children (IYC) in low- and middle-income countries. Given the extensive and intensive efforts, why aren’t we seeing more progress?
The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) project is a five-year (2016–2021) Task Order working to improve water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programming by identifying, researching and sharing best practices for the delivery of WASH services and sustained behavior change. WASHPaLS supports the Agency’s goal of reducing morbidity and mortality in children under five as part of the Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths initiative.
USAID is holding a webinar to discuss findings from the recent report, Toward a Hygienic Environment for Infants and Young Children: A Review of the Literature.
USAID recently completed this review of the scientific and grey literature to capture the state of knowledge of the health risks to infants and young children from fecal exposure in their home environments, focusing on historically underemphasized sources and transmission pathways not disrupted by the traditional suite of WASH measures.
The USAID Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) project conducted a review of the scientific and grey literature, complemented by dozens of key informant interviews with researchers and field implementers, to synthesize the latest understanding of key pathways of fecal microbe ingestion by infants and young children (IYC) and their links to diarrhea, EED, and poor nutrition and development outcomes.
Specifically, the review sought to:
In what has been termed a revolution of sorts, community-led total sanitation (CLTS) introduced a new approach to eliminating open defecation when it was pioneered by Kamal Kar 17 years ago. Since its introduction, approximately 60 countries have adopted CLTS, a technique which triggers communal disgust to change defecation behaviors and expand sanitation coverage in mostly rural communities. A good number of governments have even embraced CLTS as their national policy.
