Effectiveness of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Intervention for School going Children on Hygiene Practices, Absenteeism, Diarrhea, and Respiratory Infection: An Interventional Study Protocol

Introduction: Safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene beyond the household, and particularly in the school setting, are crucial to the health and education of children. Ashram schools where children from tribal community are taking education in India are mostly ignored. Thus, inclusion of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in schools as part of the SDG, necessitates assessing the coverage and utilization in all types of schools; Government, private, funded including Ashram (residential) schools. Hence, we plan this research to study the effectiveness of proposed WASH in Ashram school with regards to hygiene practices, diarrheal diseases, respiratory infection and school absenteeism.

Methods: Interventional study will be conducted in all eight Ashram schools of Wardha district. Baseline data regarding WASH practices and absenteeism, diarrhea, and respiratory infection will be collected. Intervention model for adopting safe WASH practices will be developed implemented in randomly selected four ashram schools. Survey and interview questionnaire will be adopted from UNICEF monitoring package modules. Children of forth, fifth and sixth classes (460), teachers, and Principles(8) will be interviewed; and school environment will be reviewed. After collection of post intervention data in ODK tool, descriptive statistics, two-sample t-tests and unadjusted mean percentages for all outcome variables were calculated by aggregating individual-level data to the school level.

Conclusion: The intervention package is based on community mobilization and participation; life skill education, capacity building of school staff related to WASH. This will contribute to bring long term changes and improvement in health status and academic performance of school children.