A third of the 2.5 billion people worldwide without access to improved sanitation live in India, as do two-thirds of the 1.1 billion practising open defecation and a quarter of the 1.5 million who die annually from diarrhoeal diseases. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a rural sanitation intervention, within the context of the Government of India’s Total Sanitation Campaign, to prevent diarrhoea, soil-transmitted helminth infection, and child malnutrition. It is based on a cluster-randomised controlled trial between May 20, 2010, and December 22, 2013, in 100 rural villages in Odisha, India.

Download the Lancet article about this study or access it on the Lancet's website.

You might also like to read a commentary by Stephen Luby entitled 'Is targeting access to sanitation enough?'

Authors: Thomas Clasen, Sophie Boisson, Parimita Routray, Belen Torondel, Melissa Bell, Oliver Cumming, Jeroen Ensink, Matthew Freeman, Marion Jenkins, Mitsunori Odagiri, Subhajyoti Ray, Antara Sinha, Mrutyunjay Suar, Wolf-Peter Schmidt

First published Online in The Lancet, Global Health on October 10, 2014.