Assessment of Drinking Water Sold from Private Sector Kiosks in Post-Earthquake Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Abstract

Consumption of drinking water from private vendors has increased considerably in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in recent decades. A major type of vendor is private kiosks, advertising reverse osmosis-treated water for sale by volume. To describe the scale and geographical distribution of private kiosks in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, an inventory of private kiosks was conducted from July to August 2013. Coordinates of kiosks were recorded with global positioning system units and a brief questionnaire was administered with the operator to document key kiosk characteristics. To assess the quality of water originating from private kiosks, water quality analyses were also conducted on a sample of those inventoried as well as from the major provider company sites. The parameters tested were Escherichia coli, free chlorine residual, pH, turbidity, and total dissolved solids. More than 1,300 kiosks were inventoried, the majority of which were franchises of four large provider companies. Approximately half of kiosks reported opening within 12 months of the date of the inventory. The kiosk treatment chain and sales price was consistent among a majority of the kiosks. Of the 757 kiosks sampled for water quality, 90.9% of samples met World Health Organization (WHO) microbiological guideline at the point of sale for nondetectable E. coli in a 100-mL sample. Of the eight provider company sites tested, all samples met the WHO microbiological guideline. Because of the increasing role of the private sector in drinking water provision in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in Haiti, this assessment was an important first step for government regulation of this sector.

Figure 1.

Full land area targeted by the kiosk inventory in metropolitan Port-au-Prince shown in dark and light grey in top left inset. Covered areas shown in dark grey, including location of kiosks and provider company sites visited. This figure appears in color at www.ajtmh.org.

Figure 2.

Reported year of opening for kiosks inventoried in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, July–August 2013.

Figure 3.

Box and whisker plot of reported weekly sales volume (gallons) for kiosks inventoried in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, July–August 2013.