User acceptance: the key to evaluating SODIS and other methods for household water treatment and safe storage

Household water treatment has been identified as one effective strategy to interrupt transmission routes of diarrhoea causing pathogens, and thus to mitigate the global burden of waterborne diseases. And yet, the commitment of governments and international organizations to integrate household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) into their water supply, sanitation, and hygiene promotion programmes remains limited. More efforts are required to scale up the initial successes in the promotion of HWTS methods, and to achieve sustainable application at user level. This article illustrates the experience with the promotion of one particular HWTS approach solar water disinfection (SODIS) as an input to the debate on effectiveness, user acceptance, and integrated planning in the context of HWTS approaches.