摘要：Objectives . We qualitatively assessed beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors related to diarrhea and water filtration in rural Kenya. Methods. A public health campaign was conducted in rural western Kenya to give community members a comprehensive prevention package of goods and services, including a personal water filter or a household water filter (or both). Two months after the campaign, we conducted qualitative interviews with 34 campaign attendees to assess their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors related to diarrhea and use of the filtration devices. Results. Participants held generally correct perceptions of diarrhea causation. Participants provided positive reports of their experiences with using filters and of their success with obtaining clean water, reducing disease, and reducing consumption of resources otherwise needed to produce clean water. Several participants offered technical suggestions for device improvements, and most participants were still using the devices at the time of the assessment. Conclusions. Novel water filtration devices distributed as part of a comprehensive public health campaign rapidly proved acceptable to community members and were consistent with community practices and beliefs. People in much of the world lack sufficient household and personal access to safe drinking water, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. 1 Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations calls for the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation to be cut in half by 2015. 2 This goal is of particular relevance to public health because of the associations among water quality, sanitation, and diarrhea, which is one of the leading causes of death globally, especially among children. 3 – 7 Diarrhea incidence is directly related to consumption of contaminated water, 6 , 8 and improvements in access to water lead to improvements in health status. 9 The population of sub-Saharan Africa is sorely lacking in access to clean water, with only 58% of the population having access. 2 Sub-Saharan Africa also lags in sanitation improvements; by 2006, only 31% of the population had access to improved sanitation (defined as facilities that ensure hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact), 10 a proportion that was only halfway to the MDG. Several factors contribute to the lack of water sanitation in developing countries. First, large-scale water treatment is expensive and requires infrastructure capabilities that are often absent in low-resource settings. 11 Second, household-level interventions promoting water sanitation have obtained mixed results 12 and are often cumbersome to implement and sustain. 13 , 14 Third, it is difficult to motivate people to change their behaviors related to water access and consumption. 8 Over the past decade, several household-level and personal-level interventions and strategies have been developed to promote family access to safe water. 9 , 15 – 18 Among these are 2 point-of-use water filtration devices with demonstrated effectiveness and usability: the LifeStraw personal water filter, a portable device, and LifeStraw Family, a larger filter that can serve an entire household. 19 – 21 Access to safe water at the individual and household levels is particularly important for people with HIV/AIDS, who often require more clean water for consumption or hygiene. 22 Point-of-use water filtration has been demonstrated to be feasible in low-resource regions in Africa. 23 , 24 Accordingly, these 2 point-of-use water filter devices were recently distributed in a rural Kenyan community as part of an integrated bundle of commodities and services aimed at rapidly improving the region's capacity to meet water- and health-related MDGs. After the devices were distributed, we conducted a qualitative assessment that examined community members’ attitudes toward diarrhea and their experiences with the distributed devices.
