Evidence Brief: WASH Interventions in Disease Outbreak Response

This evidence brief provides an overview of WASH interventions in disease outbreak response – an evidence synthesis published in February 2017 by the Humanitarian Evidence Programme and carried out by a team from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of Tufts University. It summarizes key findings in response to four research questions, indicates the country contexts from which evidence is drawn, outlines the methodology, highlights research gaps and provides references to the original literature.

The brief aims to assist policymakers, practitioners and researchers in assessing the available evidence in this field. It does not provide advice on which interventions or approaches are more or less appropriate in any given context. The varied and varying nature of crisis, vulnerability, goals of humanitarian programming, local conditions and quality of available data make the evidence highly contextual.