Providing clean drinking water in schools encourages attendance, study finds

Providing safe drinking water to children in schools can substantially increase school attendance in developing countries, new research carried out in Cambodia indicates.1

Paul Hunter, a clinical professor at the Norwich School of Medicine at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and colleagues did a quasi-experimental longitudinal study of absenteeism at eight schools in Cambodia. Four schools were provided with one 20 L container of drinking water a day, which was treated with filtration and ultraviolet disinfection. The other four schools were not provided with safe and …