To boil or not: drinking water for children in a periurban barrio

Boiling water, or other water purification methods, are common recommendations of health promoters in developing countries to improve the quality of drinking water in an attempt to decrease the incidence of childhood diarrhea. Health education programs frequently employ an approach based on knowledge deficits to promote this practice. However, there has been little published about water purification practices or associated variables such as knowledge deficits. We interviewed 266 randomly selected child caregivers about water purification in a poor periurban district of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Though most reported that they provided purified drinking water for their children when they were babies, only half of the children five years of age and under were regularly drinking purified water at the time of the study. Only one knowledge variable remained significantly related to purifying drinking water in the final multivariate model. Other factors that remained in the final model were level of maternal education, endorsing being too tired to boil water and a global measure of social support. Several other hypothesized variables were not related to purifying water. Knowledge deficits may play only a limited role in determining this prevention practice. Further work is required to better identify key factors to improve this practice and hence guide health promotion efforts.