Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) and the Incidence and Prevalence of Children in Five Public Primary Schools in N'Zerekore, Guinea

Abstract Background: In Guinea, the incidence and prevalence of children in public primary schools to common disease, e.g., diarrhoeal, malaria, fever, etc. remained pretty high mainly because of the poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions and practices. We aimed to evaluate the impacts of WASH conditions in and out of school, health education programs, and the behavioral determinants of pupils on the incidence and prevalence of children. Methods: A questionnaire was designed to collect necessary information on current hygiene conditions of all the studied primary schools, the WASH practices in and out of schools, and the incidence and prevalence of these pupils. The data were collected via a survey of the pupils (n = 1048) from five public primary schools in the center of the city of N’Zerekore, Guinea between December 2018 and May 2019. Using a social survey (questionnaire survey), face-to-face interviews with the headmasters and the teachers of several selected schools, data collection was based on students' knowledge of hygiene practices associated with WASH, hand washing situations in and out of school.Results: It reveals that the WASH conditions in all five schools are inadequate. The water access and quality in four schools over all the five schools are greatly limited by the boreholes or unprotected dug wells. The scarcity of essential hygiene kits, especially in the latrines, disinclined the pupils to use the toilets in schools. The WASH and health educations are also invalid in all schools, and therefore the pupils were ineffectively influenced to change their unhealthy WASH behaviors. Our data indicated that 100% (n = 1048) of pupils don’t wash their hands with soap after defecation in school, and over 87.9% (n = 922) of students don’t wash hands before eating. All the above determinants result in a high incidence and prevalence of children among these pupils, including malaria, typhoid, diarrhea, etc.Conclusion: To improve the WASH conditions and to change the pupils’ unhealthy behaviors in the long term, some effective interventions including the provision of clean water and sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, as well as widespread and effective health education should be implemented.