Samuel Wagari

Background: The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) service ladders are worldwide indicators for monitoring drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene elements of the sustainable development goal targets. However, evidence on how the prevalence of childhood diarrhea looks across the service ladders is limited. This study aimed to assess the relationship between WASH service ladders and the prevalence of childhood diarrhea in Haramaya Demographic and Health Surveillance site, Eastern Ethiopia. Methods: A cross-sectional study using a structured questionnaire, observational checklist, and water quality analysis was conducted on 535 households with children under 5 years of age. Poisson regression with a robust error variance estimator was used to investigate the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Results: The prevalence of diarrhea among under-five children in the surveillance site was 24.8% (95% CI: 22.3-27.6). The regression model revealed that water and sa...

Fluoride concentration in drinking water higher than the recommended value imposes different health problems and there are advanced and chemical based defluoridation techniques, even if they are not feasible for developing countries and have limitations. Due to this, defluoridation by using locally available plants is one of the most efficient and sustainable options. Therefore, the current study was intended to investigate fluoride removal efficiency of Tulsi (Ocimum Sanctum) from water, which can be an alternative means to reduce the problem related to its high concentration. A laboratory-based experimental study was implemented by using potentiometric determination in Haramaya University. The leaves of Tulsi were collected, washed with tap water, rinsed with distilled water, and then dried at room temperature, crushed and sieved through a 500-μm stainless steel sieve. The experiments were conducted on water artificially fluoridated by anhydrous fluoride and natural water samples ...