Factors associated with safe child feces disposal in Ethiopia, India, and Zambia

Global practices, geographic variation, and determinants of child feces disposal in 42 low- and middle-income countries: An analysis of standardized cross-sectional national surveys from 2016 – 2020

“…While few reports have aggregated many countries in this manner, the considerable between country variation in DAL and DIL prevalence observed here has been noted elsewhere as well ( Seidu et al, 2021 ). This variation may reflect factors operating at national or community levels such as historical and cultural attitudes ( Novotný et al, 2017 ), political and economic stability ( Als et al, 2020 ), and differences in public health messaging and WASH infrastructure investment ( Beardsley et al, 2021 ). While further work should explore inter-related effects of factors across national, community, and household scales, the factors in the present analysis focus only on household and individual level attributes common across countries.…”

Moving Up the Sanitation Ladder: A Study of the Coverage and Utilization of Improved Sanitation Facilities and Associated Factors Among Households in Southern Ethiopia

“…Past research has also shown that for some parents, beliefs of a minor health risk from a child’s feces, as well as fears of children contracting the flu from the malodorous latrines or sliding and falling into the pit of the latrines, extenuates their young children’s open defecation. 33 - 35 …”

Contextual and psychosocial factors influencing caregiver safe disposal of child feces and child latrine training in rural Odisha, India

“…While many studies also showed household wealth and caregiver latrine use as associated with the broader term of "safe disposal" [10,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], we parsed out these factors to reveal they are behaviorally specific: household wealth with caregiver safe disposal intention and caregiver latrine use with child latrine training. Household wealth may act as a proxy for a better quality latrine or exposure to more urban settings, such as a household member who works in a city, where caregiver safe disposal is more commonly practiced [9].…”

“…Taken together, this body of research has uncovered several common contextual factors related to household, caregiver, and WASH characteristics. Studies show that households are more likely to practice safe child feces disposal when they are in urban settings [15][16][17][18], wealthier [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], belong to certain religions [10,16,17,23], and when household members practice latrine use [10,22,[24][25][26]. At the caregiver level, studies found older mothers [17,18,23,26] who are literate or have higher levels of education [10,15,16,19,22,23] and greater exposure to media [16,17,21] are more likely to practice safe disposal.…”

“…Studies show that households are more likely to practice safe child feces disposal when they are in urban settings [15][16][17][18], wealthier [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], belong to certain religions [10,16,17,23], and when household members practice latrine use [10,22,[24][25][26]. At the caregiver level, studies found older mothers [17,18,23,26] who are literate or have higher levels of education [10,15,16,19,22,23] and greater exposure to media [16,17,21] are more likely to practice safe disposal. For the WASH environment, households with a latrine or water within their household compound; access to an improved latrine or water source in particular; or water was observed at a place for handwashing, were also more likely to safely dispose of their child's feces [10, 15-17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27].…”