Interventions to address unsafe child feces disposal practices in the Asia-Pacific region: a systematic review

Despite clear evidence of the adverse health impacts of unsafe child feces disposal (CFD), there is little evidence of the effectiveness of interventions targeting the improvement of unsafe CFD practices in this region. A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify and evaluate the quality of both behavior change and hardware interventions targeting the improvement of CFD practices in the Asia-Pacific region. A total of 695 articles were screened, and 11 studies were included. The combined hardware and behavior change interventions reported the highest rates of safe CFD (SCFD) post-intervention; however, these interventions were of lower quality. Four interventions focused specifically on improving SCFD practices, while the remaining seven studies evaluated the impacts of large-scale interventions, such as India's MANTRA and Total Sanitation Campaign programs, on unsafe CFD practices. Large-scale programs and hardware interventions are important for providing communities with the infrastructure necessary to improve unsafe CFD practices, but such interventions may be improved by the addition of a behavioral change component. With little evidence available on the effectiveness of behavioral interventions on reducing unsafe CFD in the Asia-Pacific region, future work should focus on how behavior change models combined with hardware interventions impact unsafe CFD.