Fecal Contamination in Low-Income Urban Environments: Findings from SaniPath Assessments in 7 Cities

CL Moe University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute Seminar Series Dr. Christine Moe presented at the University of Florida as part of The Emerging Pathogens Institute Seminar Series. Dr. Moe shared findings from SaniPath Exposure Assessments conducted in seven cities around the world. Comparisons of results from assessments in different settings allows for trends in exposure, both regionally and globally, to be explored to highlight routes of exposure to fecal contamination that are of increased importance. Produce, Open Drains, and Flood water are commonly observed to be dominant pathways of exposure for adults and children across study sites.

FSM5 & AfricaSan5 Conference: Public Health Data in Sanitation Planning Workshop

Workshop convened by: Emory University Center for Global Safe WASH, Lusaka City Council, Kampala Capital City Authority, Makerere University School of Public Health, icddr,b, TREND Ghana, Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, World Bank

Workshop Background

Recent trends in urbanization and changing population dynamics have led to a dramatic rise in populations living in urban areas throughout Africa and Asia. These urbanizing populations settle in areas in which water, sanitation and hygiene systems are already overburdened, and many live in unplanned or illegal urban or peri-urban settlements. Rapid urbanization has outpaced sanitation services and fecal sludge management (FSM) in many cities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa leading to gaps in FSM along the sanitation value chain. Shit Flow Diagrams have highlighted the points where unsafely-managed fecal waste enters the environment, but equally important is understanding where this waste ends up and the public health risks associated with its unsafe management. Sanitation decision-makers currently have a number of tools at their disposal to increase the availability and accessibility of data to support evidence-based decision-making. However, there are few opportunities to share the results of these tools and how they have been, and can be, used to influence sanitation investment, policies, and decision -making practices. This workshop allowed participants to learn about the approaches, successes, and challenges of organizations who aimed to utilize public health data in urban sanitation decision-making and to engage with fellow participants on ways to improve evidence-based decision-making in the sanitation sector. The convening organizations have all utilized the SaniPath Exposure Assessment Tool to understand exposure to fecal contamination in urban and peri-urban areas and shared their experience using this tool in the framework of factors that influence decision-making.

Wordcloud of discussion topics from workshop notes

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The SaniPath Tool: An Integrated Project Management, Data Analysis, and Visualization Platform

S Raj, Y Wang, A White, N Kishore, J Michiel, C Siesel, CL Moe

UNC Water and Health Conference (October 2018) Suraja Raj presented a poster at the UNC Water and Health Conference in October, 2018, highlighting new developments related to the new SaniPath Tool. The SaniPath Tool examines human exposure to fecal contamination in low-resource urban settings. It provides guidance for primary data collection, automated exposure analysis, and results visualizations that are accessible to people from a range of scientific backgrounds. This poster describes the development of a tool that allows users to plan a SaniPath deployment, set up and manage mobile data collection, analyze results, and generate reports. The tool guides users through steps of implementing the tool–from planning to data analysis. The tool is composed of a project planning and management interface, mobile data collection and data repository, and a data analysis and visualization dashboard. The tool can be customized to suit context-specific data collection needs. The SaniPath Tool is built on an integrated system of existing open source technologies and a tailored project management interface. It guides users through project configuration, training, and deployment by automating the customization and analysis processes. The Tool also uses an open source mobile data collection software, KoboToolbox (KT), which provides the backbone of data collection and storage. Data is collected via downloadable mobile forms used on Android devices and is uploaded to KT, which is paired with Enketo for online web data entry or editing. The tool automatically retrieves data from KT and generates exposure assessments for each study site and exposure pathway. Users can view and analyze the collected data, access data visualizations, and create a draft final report. The services are deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and backups are stored in S3 buckets for redundant data storage. The SaniPath Tool is an innovative use of mHealth in the WASH sector and can serve as an example of how open source software can be used to synthesize and analyze complex information and encourage public health evidence-based decision-making about urban sanitation investment.

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