A study of the use and impacts of LifeStraw™ in a settlement camp in southern Gezira, Sudan

This paper reports a study of the LifeStrawY in El-Masraf camp within Gezira State, Sudan. A total of 647 eligible subjects participated in the study. Two week incidence of diarrhoeal rates were estimated by a community survey some four months before and again four months after provision of the LifeStrawY. In addition counts were kept of people attending at the community clinic with diarrhoea. Compliance rates were good with 86.5% of people saying they always used it and only 3.7% saying they had never used it. In a before implementation survey 15.3% of participants reported diarrhoea in the previous 2 weeks compared with only 2.3% in a survey after implementation. Similarly 58 people presented to the clinic as a new case of diarrhoea in the four months before compared with only six in the four months after implementation. When compared with diarrhoeal attendances at the regional hospital, this was a statistically significant decline in attendances (p , 0.0001). The LifeStrawY is likely to find a role as an adjunct to water quality interventions aimed at the home. However, more research is needed to assess the long-term impact and uptake of these devices before their definitive value can be assessed.