Occurrence of Lead and Other Toxic Metals Derived from Drinking-Water Systems in Three West African Countries

Adapting a safe water storage container to improve household stored water quality in rural Burkina Faso: a cluster randomized trial

“…In contrast, households receiving rural WaSH interventions are typically dispersed, remote, and/or difficult to access due to factors such as poor road quality and seasonal flooding. These challenges make ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and improvement logistically difficult, time-consuming, and expensive (Fisher et al 2020). Local artisans, supply manufacturers and importers, and WaSH implementing agencies may be geographically distant from recipient households, as they were in both here and the Ghana trial, making timely translation of evidence into action challenging.…”

“…We assumed a 15% loss to the follow-up of households, for a sample size of 26 villages per arm, with 6 households per village. The sample size was increased to 50 villages per arm to provide adequate power to detect differences in source characteristics, functionality, and other chemical water quality outcomes of water sources at the community level, which are beyond the scope of this study but have been reported in part elsewhere (Fisher et al 2021).…”

“…The SWSC intervention had been initially developed as part of a previously reported continuous quality improvement (CQI) project in Ghana (Fisher et al 2020). In brief, the Ghanaian intervention had been developed using the Lean Six Sigma CQI framework (Pyzdek & Keller 2014).…”

“…In this study, we present the systematic adaptation of a safe water storage container (SWSC) using PDSA cycles. The original SWSC was first designed and implemented in Ghana (Fisher et al 2020), and here we describe its adaption for use in rural Burkina Faso. We describe the systematic adaptation process and evaluate the adapted SWSC intervention's impact on the microbial quality of HSW for consumption in a cluster randomized trial.…”

A Fix for Fixtures: Addressing Lead Contamination in West African Drinking Water

“…Lead in drinking water is an issue of global concern. 1 New research published in Environmental Health Perspectives documents the problem in previously unexamined areas of rural West Africa, 1 further indicating the wide reach of this harmful contaminant.…”