Dear Elisabeth

I appreciate your comments and like your idea of posting a key WASH study to generate discussion rather than posting a list or bibliography, so I will do that in the future.

For the WASH research updates, I search PubMed and other databases as well as set up google alerts and google scholar alerts and stay in touch with WASH researchers from CDC, Emory University and others.

Thanks again for your comments,
Dan

Dear Dan,

You said "Please let me know if you find this useful or if you have suggestions that would make it more useful. " So here goes: I find the topic of "Recent WASH research" too broad and it therefore has little use to me in its current form. Perhaps if you structured it according to some sub-headings then it could be more useful.

If you do it weekly, then which search methods do you use to find the latest new publications on recent WASH research? The different search terms used could allow you to structure it along different thematic categories.

Within the Gates Foundation grant that I am working on - which has a strong component of knowledge management - we often speak about providing "curated content" to SuSanA members. This somehow involves second guessing who would be interested in what and then "filtering out" information for them. This is not easy and we are still grappling with different approaches to this.

Here on the forum we also try to do this to some extent. What sometimes works really well on the forum is if one person posts about a paper that they have recently read (or perhaps even one of the authors posts about it) and then asks follow-up questions. Sometimes a very interesting discussion follows which has helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the topic. It can work really well when some people disagree on various aspects and then argue their points of view...

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Colleagues:

We conduct a literature search each week and post an informal bibliography on Sanitation Updates of links to recently published journal articles and other studies on a range of WASH issues. Please let me know if you find this useful or if you have suggestions that would make it more useful. Below are titles from the latest listing:

Recent WASH research – January 22, 2018

Comparing Contingent Valuation and Averting Expenditure Estimates of the Costs of Irregular Water Supply. Ecological Economics, April 2018. We compare two methods—contingent valuation and averting expenditures—to measure the demand for improved water reliability in urban Jordan. Our study thus adds to previous evidence in the literature, which points to the importance of consumer perceptions in determining demand for environmental improvements.

Environmental conditions in health care facilities in low- and middle-income countries: Coverage and inequalities. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 11 January 2018. 50% of HCFs lack piped water, 33% lack improved toilets, 39% lack handwashing soap. 39% of HCFs lack adequate infectious waste disposal and 59% lack reliable electricity. 2% of HCFs provide all four water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management services.

Combined effectiveness of anthelmintic chemotherapy and WASH among HIV-infected adults. PLoS NTDs, Jan 18. Deworming is effective in reducing the probability of helminth infections amongst HIV-infected adults. With the exception of safe flooring, WASH offers minimal additional benefit. However, WASH does appear to significantly reduce infection prevalence in adults who are not treated with chemotherapy.

Understanding sustained use of ecological sanitation in rural Burkina Faso. Science of the Total Environment, 1 February 2018. Only 7% of residents in rural Burkina Faso use improved sanitation. Ecological sanitation can meet sanitation needs while contributing to food security. Safe agricultural reuse of nutrients provided a strong motivation for toilet use.

The Global Risks Report 2018. WEF, 2018. In our annual Global Risks Perception Survey, environmental risks have grown in prominence in recent years. This trend has continued this year, with all five risks in the environmental category being ranked higher than average for both likelihood and impact over a 10-year horizon.

Echinococcosis: A parasitic tapeworm disease. GWPP, 2018. Echinococcosis is a parasitic disease caused by the tapeworms of the Echinococcus genus, in which humans act as accidental / aberrant intermediate hosts of these parasites.

Duncan Mara – ‘Top-down’ planning for scalable sustainable sanitation in high-density low-income urban areas: is it more appropriate than ‘bottom-up’ planning? JWSHDev, Jan 2018. We argue that, if the sanitation target of the Sustainable Development Goals (universal access to ‘safely-managed’ sanitation by 2030) is to have any chance of success, then a community-sensitive top-down planning approach has to be adopted for sanitation provision in high-density low-income urban areas in developing countries, as ‘bottom-up’ planning is much more time-consuming and not yet successfully proven at scale.

A categorization of water system breakdowns: Evidence from Liberia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Science of the Total Environment, 1 April 2018. Aprons, pipes, taps, and lift mechanisms most frequent part breakdown. Poor quality implementation often cited as a reason for breakdown. Breakdowns significantly associated with system age, management, fee collection. Data can be used to improve post-construction support for rural water services.