Impact of Water and Sanitation on Selected Water Borne Diseases in India

One of the Millennium Development Goals is to provide improved sanitation facilities along with availability of potable water; which are indeed the two basic needs for human survival. However, despite significant investments over the last 20 years, India still faces the most daunting sanitation challenge and its sanitation is rated as the second worst in the world after China. At present only 28 per cent of people in rural areas have access to toilets leading to severe burden of preventable diseases. With a view to assessing health impact of water borne diseases this study provides first an assessment of direct impact of water and sanitation facilities on incidence of selected diseases in major Indian states. This is followed by an estimation of input efficiency estimates for 28 Indian States. This is done using data envelopment analysis. It is suggested by our results that there is a positive impact of reducing the incidence of selected diseases by the state investments on water and sanitation facilities. However, the differentials impact across states of these inputs in reducing the incidence of four water borne diseases, namely, acute diarrhoea, enteric fever, viral hepatitis and malaria could be minimized to a certain extent if these inputs are targeted more effectively and some changes are made in other funding sources like NRHM.