Abstract
Water-related diseases are still a leading cause of death in developing countries. Though the relationship between water-related disease mortality rates and water sanitation and hygiene measures is well documented, the means to provide proper water and sanitation treatment remain elusive. This paper examines the effect of hard infrastructure on water-related disease rates and proposes that building infrastructure is the best way to reduce the prevalence of water-related disease in rural African villages. It examines the history of sanitation infrastructure in developed countries as well as why similar measures are difficult to implement in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper analyzes three rural African countries’ sanitation infrastructure systems (Botswana, Rwanda, Swaziland) to recommend best practices in rural African villages. Recommendations for future infrastructure systems are given as well as how governments can best implement those systems to reduce water-related disease mortality rates.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. However, for undergraduates authoring a manuscript under the guidance of a faculty member or research mentor, we strongly encourage the student to discuss with the faculty mentor and the Editor if prior publication in the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal will constrain future publication efforts in professional journals. To this end, all authors must submit a signed mentor consent form at the time of submission..