An Assessment of Some Factors Associated with Household Sanitation and Feacal Sludge Management (FSM) in Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene has established global norms to benchmark progress in House Sanitation and Faecal Sludge Management. This study assessed the factors Associated with household sanitation and Feacal Sludge Management (FSM) in Rural Communities of Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria Materials and Methods: The study adopted a community-based cross-sectional study design to assess household sanitation and associated challenges in Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State. The study was conducted in Ikwerre Local Government Area. Ikwerre LGA is one of the 23 Local Government Areas of Rivers State. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 200 households. From these households, individuals who met the inclusion criteria were purposively selected resulting in a total of 360 respondents. At the end of the survey, aggregate data were downloaded and exported into the IBM Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS, version 20.0) software for analysis. Result: The result showed the socio-demographic characteristics distribution of respondents from the study areas, 189 respondents (52.5%) were males while 171 respondents (47.5%) were females. Males were a little bit higher than females. The overall faecal sludge management practice among respondents in the LGAs revealed that 32.7% of respondents in rural communities of Ikwerre LGA had good faecal sludge management practice as against 67.3% with poor FSM practice. shows the logistic regression analysis of factors influencing FSM practice among respondents in Ikwerre LGA. Respondents who had poor knowledge about FSM were three times more likely to have poor FSM practices than those with good knowledge (OR= 2.821, CI= 1.524-5.222, p= 0.001). Conclusion: was concluded that household sanitation and FSM have continued to pose a challenge in peri-urban areas everywhere around the developing world. The government should develop a plan and policy to discourage open defecation in rural LGAs and also sensitize the communities on the dangers associated with open defecation.