The Effect of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) on Nutrition, for Sri Lankan Children Under Five Years of Age

Abstract

This study aims to determine whether drinking, cooking, handwashing water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) are associated with each of the three nutrition measures stunting, wasting and underweight jointly after adjusting for important covariates and taking in to consideration the correlation within clusters, for the districts of Sri Lanka for children under 5 years. The data from the Demographic and Health survey 2016 gives detailed information on WaSH variables, Nutrition variables and a number of other probable prognostic factors. This data has been collected by the Department of Census and Statistics. The design of the sample is a two stage cluster design with census blocks at the first stage and households at the second stage. Joint Generalized Estimation Equation (GEE) estimation has been used within Generalized Linear models (GLM) for modeling the data. Important conclusions are that when it comes to stunting and wasting tap water is better for cooking and handwashing. Good sanitation improves stunting. Urban sector has less stunting than rural sector and this has less stunting than the estate sector. Western province has lower odds of stunting. Wasting mainly depends on the proxy of wealth. Well water for drinking improves underweight. Simple methods of living improve underweight