Abstract:
Background: Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene is an important element for
communicable disease control including the existing COVID-19 pandemic. This is
due to the growing water demand and decreasing water availability, because of
shrinking resources, increased urbanization, and pollution. This problem is higher,
particularly among least developed countries like Ethiopia. This study, therefore,
aimed at investigating the level of improved water sources and sanitation as well as
their predictors in Ethiopia using EMDHS-2019.
Method: Mini Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys 2019 database survey was
used in this study. Data collection took place over 3months, from21March 2019 to 28
June 2019. A total of 9,150 households were selected for the sample, of which 8,794
were engaged. Among involved households, 8,663 were successfully interviewed at a
response rate of 99%. The dependent variables measured in this study were improved
drinking water sources and sanitation facilities. Due to the nested nature of DHS data,
multilevel binary logistic regression analysis was done using Stata-16.
Results: The majority (72.62%) of household heads were men, and 69.47% of
participants were from rural areas. Close to half (47.65%) of study participants did not
have any form of formal education, while the lowest proportion (9.89%) of them had
higher education. Approximately 71.74 and 27.45% of the households have accessed
improved water sources and sanitation, respectively. Based on the final model results,
wealth index, educational status, and having a television individual-level variables
while community-level poverty, community-level education, community-levelmedia
exposure, and place of residence were statistically significant predictors of getting
improved water source and sanitation.
Conclusion: The level of access to improved water sources is moderate but it lacks
progress, while access to improved sanitation was lower. Based on these findings,
great improvements should bemade in providing access to an improved water source
and sanitation facilities in Ethiopia. Based on these findings, great improvements
should bemade in providing access to improved water source and sanitation facilities
