Research project

OneHealthWater

Project overview

This project aimed to develop evidence concerning the risks of disease transmission from livestock to people via water through fieldwork in rural Siaya county, Kenya, so as to find ways of disrupting this transmission. The project was a collaboration between Southampton, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, VIRED International, and University of Brighton, exploring various avenues to generating evidence on this issue. One approach was through rural communities mapping and ranking water points and hazards in their environment, which revealed that the communities greatly valued rainwater harvesting, even above piped water. A second approach, assessing microbiological contamination of water stored in the home, revealed observed poultry and goat-keeping as risk factors for contamination. We also tracked cattle using GPS collars, but found that seasons of high diarrhoea risk did not coincide with times when cattle were often near people's water points or homes. Finally, we found that when looking for contamination hazards near water sources so as to tackle such contamination risks, there were some hazards that surveyors struggled to identify consistency. These findings all add to the evidence base on water contamination risks from livestock and their management.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Jim Wright

Professor in GIS & Int Development

Research interests

  • Safe water access and public health in Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Environmental applications of GIS
  • Geospatial analysis for public health, particularly via routine health management information systems
Connect with Jim

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs

Joseph Okotto-Okotto, Peggy Wanza, Emmah Kwoba, Weiyu Yu, Mawuli Dzodzomenyo, Samuel Thumbi, Diogo Gomes da Silva & Jim A. Wright, 2019, Exposure and Health
Type: article