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Prepaid water 'unhygienic'
15/05/2007 13:17 - (SA)
Pretoria - Prepaid water meters impact negatively on hand washing behaviour, raising the risk of water-borne diseases in lower-income communities, a report by health experts has found.
The report titled "The Problem of Hand washing and Paying for Water" was conducted for the Municipal Services Project by Dr David Sanders, Dr Mickey Chopra and Farhaad Haffajee.
The research involved 107 households from Soweto in Johannesburg.
Sanders said: "In general, hygiene behaviours were worse in households that were being supplied by the prepaid method."
He said evidence found that those being asked to prepay for their water were practising poorer hygiene behaviours than their neighbours who were still on "deemed consumption".
The study found that there was a significant difference in the proportion of household carers with deemed (43%) versus prepaid water (77%) who never washed their hands with flowing tap water.
A basic good
"In conclusion, in a country where poverty is rife, where there is soaring unemployment, where there is a massive housing backlog, and where hunger is a daily reality, it is unrealistic to expect poor people to purchase, in advance, a basic good such as water," added Sanders.
Water-related diseases, especially diarrhoea, were widely recognised as major threats to public health, especially in the developing world.
"It is estimated that globally 19% of all infectious diseases are related to water, sanitation and hygiene risk factors," Sanders said.
- SAPA
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