Water and sanitation among people with disabilities

There were no differences in access to improved sanitation or water sources between households with/ without members with disabilities across the datasets. In Bangladesh-2, households including a person with a disability were more likely to share facilities with other households (OR 1.3, 95% CI 1.1 to 1.5). Households with people with disabilities were more likely to spend >30min (round-trip) collecting drinking water than households without in both Cameroon (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.0 to 3.4) and India (OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.2 to 4.7). Within households, people with disabilities reported difficulties collecting water themselves (23%–80%unable to) and accessing the same sanitation facilities as other household members, particularly without coming into contact with faeces (up to 47% in Bangladesh-2). These difficulties were most marked for people with more severe impairments. People with disabilities may not have poorer access to WASH at the household level, but may have poorer quality of access within their households. Further programmatic work is needed to ensure WASH facilities are inclusive of people with disabilities.

Full text article available at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5988144/pdf/bmjopen-2017-020077.pdf