Centralized or Onsite Testing? Examining the Costs of Water Quality Monitoring in Rural Africa Journal article

Description:

Rural water systems in Africa have room to improve water quality monitoring. However, the most cost-effective approach for microbial water testing remains uncertain. This study, produced by REAL-Water, compared the cost per E. coli test (membrane filtration) of four approaches representing different levels of centralization: (i) one centralized laboratory serving all water systems, (ii) a mobile laboratory serving all systems, (iii) multiple semi-centralized laboratories serving clusters of systems, and (iv) decentralized analysis at each system.

We employed Monte Carlo analyses to model the costs of these approaches in three real-world contexts in Ghana and Uganda and in hypothetical simulations capturing various conditions across rural Africa.

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Bibliographical Information:

REAL-Water (2024) Centralized or Onsite Testing? Examining the Costs of Water Quality Monitoring in Rural Africa. Journal article , United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

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