Page 48 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Mbu Daniel Tambi , Peter Arung Etat: Implications of Access to Portable Water
For Child Health Production in Cameroon

Gundry et al (2004) intimated that in developing countries, the microbial
contamination of household drinking water is implicated in the prevalence of various
diseases, generally diarrhea and cholera, and their relationship with water quality at
point-of-use. For cholera, a clear relationship was found with contaminated water.
Home water treatment and storage interventions were also found to reduce cholera.
For diarrhea, no clear relationship was found with point-of-use water quality,
although interventions did significantly reduce diarrhea incidence. Ntouda et al
(2013) determines the influence of access to drinking water on the health of
populations in SSA, using data from Cameroon, Senegal and Chad DHS. Based on
their study, it is clear from their descriptive analysis that 60 percent (Cameroon) and
59 percent (Chad) of the cases of childhood diarrhea are due to the consumption of
dirty water. In terms of explanatory analysis, they noted that when a household in
Cameroon, Senegal or Chad does not have access to drinking water, children under 5
years old residing there are respectively 1.29, 1.27 and 1.03 times more likely to
have diarrhea than those residing in households with easy access to drinking water.

Aryal (2012) observed that the incidence of diarrhea per 1000 population was found to
be the highest in spring without toilet with 204.89 followed by Tube well without
toilet with 145.30, while it was less in Tap water with toilet with 46.05. With respect
to the burden of disease, Aryal also found it to be the highest in spring without toilet
and the lowest in Tap water with toilet. Aryal (2012) realized that the households
didn't treat water before drinking while hand washing practice was found to be more
than 90% regardless of toilet availability. Thus, he argued that, there is greater risk of
acquiring diarrhea disease and higher burden of disease in situation of unprotected
water source and absence of toilet shows that these are still important contributing
factors for diarrhea disease in Nepal. The use of sanitary toilets and protected water
source are the important measures for diarrhea disease prevention in Nepal.

3. METHODOLOGICAL SETTING
We adopt a modified version of child health production function model as originally
proposed by Rosenzweig and Schultz (1983). In a given production function, child
health is a function of factors such as gestational age, the timing, quantity and quality
of child health care and health-related behaviour of the mother during pregnancy. In
practice, money prices are not observed for many inputs into health production
functions, such as use of child health care. If the time cost of using these inputs is
large, then measures of distance to a health facility are part of the full price of service
and may serve to identify the input, Cebu Study Team (1992) provide examples of this
approach for estimating child health production functions.

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