Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part A (2025)

Unsafe drinking water and inadequate household water-handling practices remain major contributors to preventable morbidity and mortality in rural communities, despite global progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 6. Community health nurses are strategically positioned to address these gaps through targeted education and behaviour-change interventions at household level. This quasi-experimental research evaluated the effectiveness of nurse-led awareness sessions in promoting safe drinking water practices among rural households. Two comparable villages were purposively selected; one served as the intervention group (n = 120 households) and the other as the comparison group (n = 120). Baseline data on knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding safe water collection, storage, treatment and handling were collected using a pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaire. The intervention comprised three structured group awareness sessions and one follow-up household visit, delivered by trained community health nurses over four weeks, using demonstrations, pictorial flipcharts and locally relevant examples. Post-intervention assessment was conducted at 3 months. Data were analysed using paired and independent t-tests and chi-square tests at a 5% significance level. At baseline, knowledge and practice scores did not differ significantly between groups. Following the nurse-led awareness sessions, the intervention group showed a marked increase in mean knowledge scores (from 11.8±3.1 to 18.6±2.7; p<0.001) and safe practice scores (from 10.4±2.9 to 17.2±3.0; p<0.001), whereas changes in the comparison group were minimal and non-significant. The proportion of households consistently using appropriate water treatment methods (boiling, chlorination or filtration) increased from 28.3% to 72.5% in the intervention group, compared with 30.0% to 34.2% in the comparison group. Self-reported two-month incidence of suspected water-borne illness among household members decreased by 41.3% in the intervention group, versus 9.1% in the comparison group. The findings suggest that nurse-led awareness sessions are a feasible and effective strategy for improving safe drinking water practices in rural communities and may contribute to reductions in water-related illness when integrated into routine community health nursing programmes.