Water, sanitation, hygiene and enteric infections in children

Abstract

In 2007, readers of the British Medical Journal voted that the introduction of clean water and sewerage—the ‘sanitation revolution’ of the Victorian era—was the most important medical milestone since the 1840s,1 over anaesthesia, antibiotics, or vaccines. These improvements led to a dramatic reduction in morbidity and mortality associated with faecal-oral infections, such as typhoid fever and cholera. Today, water, sanitation and hygiene (WSH) measures remain critically important to global public health, especially among children in lower income countries, who are at greatest risk from enteric infections and their associated symptoms, complications and sequelae.