LifeStraw® Family - Health Impact

Field study: Clasen, T. et al. 2010. Field assessment of a novel household-based water filtration device: a randomised placebo-controlled trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo. PloS One September 2010

Study design: 12-month RCT among 240 households (1144 persons) in remote, rural Congo

Outcome: Health impact: 15% reduction in risk of diarrhoea, though not statistically significant. Investigators emphasised that the measured reduction may underestimate the actual effect because the comparison group used an intended placebo that actually removed more than 90% of TTC from their water. The study was not powered to achieve statistical significance at the 15% level

Modeling study: Efficacy of a water quality intervention: accounting for systematic bias

Study design: Development of Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment Models (QMRA) to evaluate the impact of bias on estimates of intervention efficacies and to generalize the effectiveness of an intervention to different contexts.

Partners: Michigan State University (USA), University of California Berkeley (USA), University of Michigan (USA), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK

Outcome: Assuming the device was used 100% of the time by 69% of the people there was an estimated 50% decrease in diarrhoea (compared with a 15% reduction when an imperfect placebo is used, study by Clasen T. 2010) Under the assumption of a perfect use (100% of the time by 100% of the participants) this
translates to a 75% reduction in diarrhoea.

*study included both LifeStraw^® and LifeStraw^® Family

Field study: Dye, T.D. 2009. “You can take water any place you are:” A qualitative assessment of water related illness beliefs, behaviors, and community acceptance of novel personal water filtration devices (under publication)*

Partner: Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, SUNY Upstate Medical University, New York

Outcome: 35% of the study group reported decrease in diarrhoeal cases

Field study: Investigating the functioning and acceptability of LifeStraw^® Family by its intended target group in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Partner: USAID-funded project AXxes (2007)

Outcome: Several participants mentioned that their children had no diarrhoea since using the product