Hot off the Press — Evaluation of the Safe Water Optimization Tool to Provide Evidence-Based Chlorination Targets in Surface Waters: Lessons from a Refugee Setting in Uganda

Dahdaleh Institute director James Orbinski, research fellow James Brown, global health graduate scholar Michael De Santi, and faculty fellow Syed Imran Ali have just published a new paper in the leading engineering journal Environmental Science & Technology titled ‘Evaluation of the Safe Water Optimization Tool to Provide Evidence-Based Chlorination Targets in Surface Waters: Lessons from a Refugee Setting in Uganda,’ with collaborators at Tufts University, Oxfam, and MSF. 

This paper presents a mixed methods evaluation led by Tufts University of the Safe Water Optimization Tool in Oxfam-managed water systems at the Kyaka II refugee settlement in Uganda. The paper demonstrates that the SWOT is able to improve water safety outcomes at the household level—where it matters most for public health—in water systems reliant on surface water sources, which are generally more difficult to treat and manage water quality in compared to groundwater sources. The paper contributes evidence demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the SWOT across the full range of water systems encountered in humanitarian settings—in piped networks, water trucking, medical facility/institutional water systems, and with both groundwater and surface water.

Read the full article here.

Heylen, C., String, G., Naliyongo, D., Ali, Syed Imran, Brown, James, De Santi, Michael, Ogira, V., Fesselet, J., Orbinski, James, & Lantagne, D. (2024). Evaluation of the Safe Water Optimization Tool to Provide Evidence-Based Chlorination Targets in Surface Waters: Lessons from a Refugee Setting in Uganda. Environmental Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c04240

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