Uptake Of Community-Led Total Sanitation Approach Towards Attainment Of Open-Defecation-Free Status In Siaya County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

By 2015, an estimated 2.4 billion people lacked basic sanitation and 15% still practiced open defecation globally. In Kenya, approximately 5.6 million people still defecated in the open. Siaya County adopted Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in 2010 as an approach to address the problem of open defecation. This study aimed at assessing the uptake of the CLTS approach in Siaya County, Kenya. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 370 randomly selected households. Structured questionnaires, Focused Group Discussions, and Key Informant Interviews were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, and standard deviation) was performed for quantitative data using SPSS version 20.0. To identify the factors associated with the CLTS uptake bivariate analysis was performed. Those factors with p-Values ≤0.05 were considered statistically significant. The qualitative data collected were thematically analyzed and used to support the quantitative results. A total of 370 respondents were interviewed. The mean age was 46.2 years (SD=15.2 Years), females were 242 (65%), 283 (76.5%) were married and 132 (35.7%) were age 40–49 years. Sixty-three percent (232/370) of those interviewed had attained primary education. Of the households visited, 303 (82%) had pit latrines, while and 307 (83%) had attained the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. Of the 303 households with latrines, 97 (32%) shared with their neighbors who did not have, while for the 67 (18%) households that didn’t have pit latrines, 43 (64.2%) shared with their neighbors who had latrines. The ODF status increased from