Household Water Treatment in Benin: Current/Local Practices

Abstract

In Benin, many families struggle to ensure the safety of the drinking water. This problem is common to most of developing countries. Even the water is clean, at source, it can be contaminated during transport and storage. Then, household water treatment technologies as emerged as an approach people can rely to treat water at home. Several methods of household water treatment are known and in use in Benin. Some from ancestral knowledge, others from initiative of NGOs. A very few households treat their water to prevent waterborne diseases, even if the source is not improved. And most of the time, they do not use these methods according to the recommended operating procedures. To address today the problem of the safety of water quality at household level in Benin, the need of the efficiency of the household water treatment in local area has to be proved. Moreover, populations have to be involved in all the aspect of the implementation of these methods. Communication and local NGOs outreach are also essential.