Please select the eligibility criteria that correspond to the clinical trial below.
Title: Evaluating the Impact of Community Led Total Sanitation in Mali. A Randomized Controlled Trial
Brief Summary: Behavioral change is a key ingredient for successful adoption of better sanitation practices in rural Africa. Sanitation programs have, for some time now, incorporated the need to raise awareness and emphasize the benefits of toilet usage. These endeavors, often combined with subsidies linked to toilet construction by households, seek to create a demand for sanitation goods. Yet, progress in securing the desired outcomes from sanitation programs has been slow. Moreover, benefits of sanitation largely take the form of externalities, which individuals do not take into account when making their own decisions about investments. This makes sanitation promotion at the household level particularly challenging.

A new approach to sanitation entails a shift away from the provision of subsidies for toilets to individual households and a promotion of behavioral change at individual-level towards emphasizing collective decision-making in order to produce 'open defecation-free' villages. The objective of the intervention is to reduce the incidence of diseases related to poor sanitation and manage public risks posed by the failure to safely confine the excreta of some community members. The way to achieve this objective is by empowering communities motivated to take collective action. Local governments and other agencies perform a facilitating role. There is a growing recognition that this approach, referred to as Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), may help with the reduction of open defecation practices. However, no rigorous impact evaluation of CLTS has been conducted so far. This randomized controlled trial will study the effect of CLTS in rural Mali. As a result, sound evidence will become available to see to what extent CLTS improves health outcomes and what is driving collective action in order to increase sanitation coverage.

The direct recipients of the intervention are members of rural communities in Mali who aspire to live in a cleaner environment. The donor community, international organizations, and governments in developing countries will benefit from having simple and clear evidence on the effectiveness of an innovative program for improving sanitation in rural areas. They will learn whether the program has worked or failed to achieve its objective of eradicating open defecation, and about key factors explaining success and failure.


Options:
A: Inclusion Criteria:

* Villages located in rural Mali.
* CLTS targets small villages (less than 4500 inhabitants).
* Open defecation is present

Exclution criteria:

-Villages where CLTS is already in place
B: Inclusion Criteria:

(1) Infants (target child) will be eligible to participate in the study if they are:

1. They are in utero at the baseline survey
2. Their parents/guardians are planning to stay in the study village for the next 12 months (if a mother is planning to give birth at her natal home and then return, she will still be a candidate for enrollment)

(2) Children \< 36 months old at baseline that are living in the compound of a target child will be eligible to participate in diarrhea measurement if:

1. They are \< 36 months old at the baseline survey
2. Their parents/guardians are planning to stay in the study village for the next 12 months

(3) Children 18 - 27 months old at baseline that are living in the compound of a target child will be eligible to participate in intestinal parasite specimen collection if:

1. They are 18 - 27 months old at the baseline survey
2. Their parents/guardians are planning to stay in the study village for the next 12 months
C: Inclusion Criteria:

* All people above 18 years of age.

Exclusion Criteria:

-
D: Inclusion Criteria:

Village level:

* Little existing sanitation coverage (\<10%)
* WaterAid and implementing partners expects normal scale up
* Stable and reasonably acceptable water supply
* No other WASH interventions planned or anticipated in next 30 months
* Reasonable year-round access by road to permit household visits by surveillance staff

Household level:

* Presence of a child\<4 or a pregnant woman
* Consent to participate
* Reside permanently in the village

Answer: A