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. 2020 Sep 7;17(18):6517.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph17186517.

Assessing the Impacts of Relative Wealth and Geospatial Factors on Water Access in Rural Nepal: A Community Case Study

Naseeha Islam  1 , Pramesh Koju  2 , Reetu Manandhar  2 , Sudip Shrestha  2 , Charlotte Smith  1
Affiliations

Assessing the Impacts of Relative Wealth and Geospatial Factors on Water Access in Rural Nepal: A Community Case Study

Naseeha Islam et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

As one of the poorest nations, citizens of Nepal lack access to safe, affordable, and sufficient drinking water. While many nationwide studies have been performed at a country or regional level in Nepal to determine regions of the highest vulnerability, this study uniquely recognizes the economic heterogeneity within a single rural village and assesses the impact of household socioeconomic status on water access at the intracommunity level. Household surveys in a rural village setting provided the information for a locally-informed relative wealth index. A spatial analysis determined suitable locations for future installation of improved water sources to prioritize water access for the community's most vulnerable households. Three sites were shown to be optimal for future water source construction. This study provides a blueprint to assess water inequalities within a single village and incorporate forward-thinking development approaches to water access.

Keywords: WASH; geospatial information systems; suitability analysis; wealth inequality.

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Conflict of interest statement

The partnership between the Dhulikhel Hospital Department of Community Programs and the student organization GlobeMed at Berkeley sets out not simply to gather data on the communities involved for the sake of research, but rather aims to create collaborative, sustainable public health projects to benefit the people within those communities in both the short and long term time scales. The 2019 household surveys were only one aspect of the project conducted for that year. Other project elements included WASH, nutrition, and menstrual health curriculum at the same Bolde secondary schools, as well as the funding and distribution of locally built household water filters for community members. Household surveys were primarily conducted with the intention of gathering data to inform long-term, sustainable development and solutions for the Bolde community. The curriculum and water filters, on the other hand, were included in the project due to the need to implement short term solutions, as determined by leaders at the DCP, in hopes that community residents would not need to wait long periods of time before taking their health and well-being into their own hands. All three legs of the 2019 project—data collection, curriculum building, and filter distribution—were jointly constructed and funded by both the DCP and GlobeMed at Berkeley. However, both filters and secondary school curriculum were distributed after all surveys were conducted so as to reduce the possibility of response bias.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of relative wealth index construction.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bolde households with greater than 30 min round-trip walk times to their improved water source (blue points) and area reachable within 30 min (highlighted region).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Sampled households without access to a tap on immediate premises (red points), and area within 200 m of household clusters (highlighted region).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Sampled households that fall within the bottom two quintiles of relative wealth (green points), and area reachable within a 10 min round trip (highlighted region).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Suitable regions for improved water source construction sites based on superimposed layers of water access, available taps, and relative wealth factors, with recommendations for three optimal sites (red marked locations).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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