Factors supporting the sustained use of solar water disinfection — Experiences from a global promotion and dissemination programme

Every year, 1.8 million people, mainly children under the age of five, die of diarrhoea. Point-of-use water treatment methods, such as solar water disinfection (SODIS), reveal a great potential to reduce the global diarrhoea burden. Comprehensive microbiological research demonstrated the effectiveness of SODIS to destroy diarrhoea-causing pathogens in contaminated drinking water. Since the year 2000, SODIS is being promoted in developing countries through information and awareness campaigns, training and advising of the public sector (government institutions), networking activities, as well as user training at the grassroot level. The method is currently used in 33 countries by more than 2 million people. Several project evaluations and health impact studies reveal that the diarrhoea incidence of SODIS users has dropped by 16–57%. One year after project implementation, 20–80%of the trained people used SODIS on a regular basis. This paper looks into factors influencing acceptance and sustained use of SODIS on grassroot level, i.e. local availability of bottles, repeated promotion and training programmes, motivation and commitment of promoters, educational level of users, social pressure, and institutional aspects.