Water is one of the most crucial substances for life. In order to maintain their public health, each and every country has defined standards of drinking water quality, beyond which the water is considered harmful for human health. The current study compares physical, chemical, and biological standards of drinking water quality for the USA, EU, Japan, India, and Bangladesh, considering 4 physica...

Water is one of the most crucial substances for life. In order to maintain their public health, each and every country has defined standards of drinking water quality, beyond which the water is considered harmful for human health. The current study compares physical, chemical, and biological standards of drinking water quality for the USA, EU, Japan, India, and Bangladesh, considering 4 physica...

Editorials 210 In March 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a report 1 on the status of water and sanitation in health-care facilities from 54 low-and middle-income countries. Data representing 66 000 health facilities show that water was not readily available in about 40%. 1 Over a third of facilities lacked soap for hand washing a...

To combat the threat to human health and biosecurity from antimicrobial resistance, an understanding of its mechanisms and drivers is needed. Emergence of antimicrobial resistance in microorganisms is a natural phenomenon, yet antimicrobial resistance selection has been driven by antimicrobial exposure in health care, agriculture, and the environment. Onward transmission is affected by standard...

Redefining shared sanitation Thilde Rheinländer, Flemming Konradsen, Bernard Keraita, Patrick Apoya & Margaret Gyapong a Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farigmagsgade 5, 1014 Copenhagen, Denmark. b Africa Sanitation Think Tank, 03 BP 7112, Ouagadougou 03, Burkina Faso. c Dodowa Health Research Center and School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana. Co...

A cross-sectional household survey of height among children under five years of age (n = 2,632) was conducted in the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. Multi-level linear regression was applied to investigate the effect of socioeconomic and demographic factors, physical and social environment, and health conditions on children s height, measured by the height-for-age z-score...

Improved water supply, sanitation and hygiene used in combination are effective at achieving better health for poor people in developing countries. However, donor policy has been dominated by interventions in water supply, at the expense of achieving the potential health benefits of improved sanitation and hygiene. Commitments recently made by the international community require greater emphasi...

The development of a human right to water and sanitation under international law has created an imperative to implement human rights in water and sanitation policy. Through forty-three interviews with informants in international institutions, national governments, and non-governmental organizations, this research examines interpretations of this new human right in global governance, national po...