| Abstract | Undertaken along with a project being conducted by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, in the framework of the global efforts of the International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage created by WHO, the main objective of this thesis study is to assess the microbiological effectiveness and cost of treating water in the home by boiling with an expectation of filling the gap of lacking such documented information in Vietnam and providing a sound basic to compare this method with other household-base water treatment means. The study 'was conducted over a course of 12 weeks in Boc Bo, a poor mountainous community in Pac Nam district, Bac Kan province, Vietnam. A total of 50 households with 263 persons were recruited; 490 samples of source and drinking water were test; structured questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews in combination with direct physical observations were applied in the study in order to achieve its objectives. Microbial quality of source water at the study households was found much improve after being boiled. While none of 247 samples of source water met WHO guidelines for 0 TTCs/100ml, 37.4% samples of boiled drinking water met such a benchmark. Conversely, 51.9% of samples of source water fell into the high risk or very high risk categories, none of the boiled drinking samples was in the very high risk category, only 2.1% of those fell into the high risk category. However, at certain points, TTC counts in the samples of boiled drinking water were still very high or even higher than the counts in the samples of their source waters at the same households. This was due to the recontamination caused by the improper sanitation conditions and hygiene practices at the households. The possibility and level of getting re-contaminated of the boiled water depend on types of storage vessels and length of storage time. Cost of boiling water was estimated for households who used firewood as fuel to boil their water in this study. The initial cost of boiling water with firewood which is deemed to the purchasing cost of boiling vessel is around 40,000VND, US$2.5. The average direct cost of purchased firewood spent for boiling water was 26,900VND/month, 1.68US$/month which accounted for 1.04% of the household monthly incomes (range, 0.68%-2.56%). The average indirect cost of time spent on collecting firewood for boiling water at the study households was 4,350VND/month, US$0.272/month which accounted for 0.48% of their monthly incomes (range, 0.11%-1.30%). The average indirect cost of time spent on preparing for boiling and heating water of the study households at low estimate was 24,600VNDhmonth, US$ 1.54/month which accounted for 2.12% of their monthly incomes (range, 0% - 6.46%) and at high estimate, it was 39,000VND/month. US$2.4/month which accounted for 3.52% of their monthly incomes (range, 0%-14.06%). These costs of boiling with firewood in general are quite reasonable and acceptable for the households in the study community. However, at some households, it accounted for up to 14.06% of the total household monthly income only for the time spent on preparing for boiling and heating water. In these cases, other water treatment methods which are less time consuming may be more appropriate. |