Bivariate analysis indicated that the likelihood of there
being a case of diarrhoea in a particular household was
greater for unpiped households than those without a piped
water connection. When multivariate analysis was performed on the entire data set including the piped households, whether or not a household had piped water
connection did not emerge as a significant determinant of
diarrhoea prevalence. This might be the result of the fact
that it was mainly the surface water that predisposed to
diarrhoea rather than the whole range of unpiped sources.
The effect of alternative water sources for unpiped
households is telling: 33% of households which relied on
surface water as their primary source reported at least one
diarrhoea case in the week preceding the survey. However,
the precise type of surface water is important, with
households relying upon seeps, springs, reservoirs and ponds
having much higher rates of incidence than those relying
upon streams or rivers. Indeed logistic regression analysis
revealed that use of surface water increased the odds of
reporting a case of diarrhoea in the last week by a factor of
1.75. This is broadly consistent with findings by Manun’ebo
et al. (1994) who reported a significant association between
diarrhoea prevalence and drinking water source.