Reliable access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services is a critical component of child health and development. However, as piped water systems with taps conveniently close to households are rare in rural, sub-Saharan Africa, there is limited evidence of their impact. We conducted a quasi-experimental study in four rural villages of southern Zambia between April 2018 and May 2019 in which we measured the impact of installing on-premises piped water systems on fecal contamination of stored water and caregivers’ hands. Gaining access to piped water was associated with a 0.5 log₁₀ reduction of E. coli concentration in drinking water (p < 0.05) but no changes in hand contamination. The piped water systems in this study reduced the median distance to a safe drinking water source by over 90%, but we measured only small improvements in microbiological outcomes and no changes in the duration of self-reported, in-home water storage. These findings emphasize the need for future impact assessments of piped water systems to measure a comprehensive set of indicators directly linked to human well-being such as time savings.

可靠地获得水、环境卫生和个人卫生 (WASH) 服务是儿童健康和发展的重要组成部分。然而，由于在撒哈拉以南非洲的农村地区很少有靠近家庭的水龙头的管道供水系统，因此其影响的证据有限。我们于 2018 年 4 月至 2019 年 5 月在赞比亚南部的四个农村进行了一项准实验研究，其中我们测量了安装本地管道供水系统对储存水和护理人员手的粪便污染的影响。获得自来水与饮用水中大肠杆菌浓度降低0.5 log ₁₀相关（p < 0.05) 但手部污染没有变化。本研究中的管道供水系统将与安全饮用水源的中位距离缩短了 90% 以上，但我们测量到的微生物结果仅略有改善，而自我报告的家庭储水持续时间没有变化。这些发现强调了未来对管道供水系统进行影响评估的必要性，以衡量与人类福祉直接相关的一套综合指标，例如节省时间。