Q. I am in Jakarta to help design and plan the impact study at the end of the WSLIC2 WASH project.
The study will include testing quality of water in improved and unimproved sources and in some home storage vessels.
Tests should cover bacteriological quality, including E coli, and the most common chemical parameters (iron, fluoride, nitrate, ?) (not sure if other parameters, such as arsenic are important in Indonesia; will find out)
During the baseline, tests were done in laboratories.
Provinces concerned are West & East Java, S and W Sumatra, West Nusa Tenggara, S & W Sulawesi and Bangka Belitung (island off East coast of Sumatra).
I would like to propose field test kits if this is as effective and more efficient than lab tests of field samples, and the kits can be used without (much) training.
In my slow sand filtration days the usual kits were Millipore kits. However, there may be better alternatives today. The Shinyanga impact evaluation team used kits of Kyoritsu.
(IRC staff member)
Answer. Here is some info on commonly used field test kits.
[1] The DelAgua kit, developed by Oxfam and the Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health, University of Surrey, is designed to carry out five basic tests to measure the quality of drinking-water: microbiological quality, turbidity, free chlorine, total chlorine and pH. The kit is designed for use in the field, but may also be used in a laboratory or other permanent location.
A GWA case study of the use of the DelAgua kit by CARE in Yemen was recently published in Source Bulletin
[2] Wagtech International Portable Water Testing. The have kits for monitoring micro-biological and physico-chemical water quality in the field. On their web site they claim that they have supplied kits to UNICEF and WHO.
[3] India Water Portal has published a list of field kits for water quality testing available in India. Included are the water quality parameters each kit can test for, the price (if available) and the supplier’s address. There is also a link to a 2005 UNICEF evaluation of several field testing kits.
[4] UNICEF has used simple water testing field kit for bacteriological quality only in post-tsunami programme in Sri Lanka. See a recent article in Source South Asia.
It is probably wise to check with local WES staff from WHO and UNICEF for more specific info about the use of field kits in Indonesia.
A.
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