Latrine Use And Associated Factors Among Rural Community Members In Samburu East Sub-County, Samburu County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Lack of latrines remain a widespread health and environmental hazard in many developing countries. Globally, 2.5 billion people do not use improved latrine facilities and in Kenya, over five million people are forced to resort to open defecation due to lack of latrines resulting in the prevalence of sanitation related diseases such as diarrhoea. The study aimed at determining latrine use and associated factors among the rural community members in Samburu East Sub-County, Samburu County, Kenya. A community based cross sectional study design was utilized for the study. Samburu East Sub-County was purposively selected based on its low latrine coverage while simple random sampling was used to select Nairimirimo Location which was the study area forming the sampling frame. All the four Sub-Locations within the study Location were included in the study with the households forming the sampling units. Systematic random sampling of households was conducted using a household register to select the households to be included in the study with a pre-defined skipping pattern of every sixth household being utilized in each Sub-Location. Quantitative data was collected from 210 community members who were interviewed using a structured household questionnaire which also included an observation checklist. Transect walk within the study area was also conducted to make key latrine use observations. Qualitative data was collected through Focused Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews to complement the household survey findings. All field questionnaires were first checked for completeness, coded, entered into SPSS and cleaned before data analysis. Descriptive findings are presented as numerical summaries, tables and charts while inferential statistics made use of Chi-Square and Fisher’s Exact tests to measure association between the dependent and independent variables with p values of less or equal to 0.05 being considered statistically significant. The study findings indicated that latrine use was higher among households living near market centres (p=0.001), those who had either primary or secondary level of education (p=0.001), among the low income earners (p=0.033) and also among the male headed households (p=0.040). Latrine use was however observed to be lowest among livestock keepers (p=0.001). Further, the study found out that the main factors hindering latrine use in the study area were: high (88.1%) illiteracy rates (p=0.001), low (6%) involvement of men (p=0.001) in latrine construction, low (27%) involvement of the government (p=0.002) in promoting latrine use, cultural beliefs, taboos and traditions (p=0.002), lack of latrine construction skills (p=0.022), high (84.8%) poverty levels (p=0.033) and low (17%) self-initiation of latrine construction (p=0.043). The study concludes that all efforts geared towards up scaling latrine use in the study area must tackle all the underlying barriers. With one year to the MDG deadline, concerted efforts are now required to persuade all the stakeholders, National and County governments to improve latrine use in Samburu East Sub-County in order to reduce the apparent latrine use disparities for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the government of Kenya national sanitation targets