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Three water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) support tools were applied to Kampala city, Uganda, to evaluate areas with the highest health hazard due to poor wastewater and faecal sludge management and to develop interventions to improve sanitation and reduce exposure. The Pathogen Flow and Mapping Tool (PFMT) assessed how different sanitation management interventions influence pathogen emissions to surface water using rotavirus as the indicator pathogen, while the HyCRISTAL health hazard tool evaluated how flooding and drainage infrastructure influence the presence of human excreta in the environment. The SaniPath tool identified common high-risk pathways of exposure to faecal contamination in food, open drains and floodwater. An overlap in high health hazard hotspot areas was identified by the PFMT and the HyCRISTAL tools. Across the city, the most important hazard sources were the indiscriminate disposal of faecal waste into open stormwater drains from onsite sanitation technologies, open defecation and the insufficient treatment of wastewater. The SaniPath tool identified drain water, floodwater, street food and uncooked produce as the dominant faecal exposure pathways for selected parishes in the city, demonstrating the presence of excreta in the environment. Together, the tools provide collective evidence guiding household, community, and city-wide sanitation, hygiene and infrastructure management interventions from a richer assessment than when a single tool is applied. For areas with high spatial risks, those practising open defecation, and for low-lying areas, these interventions include the provision of watertight pit latrines or septic tanks that are safely managed and regularly emptied. Faecal sludge should be emptied before flood events, direct connections of latrines to open storm drains should be prevented, and the safe handling of food and water promoted. The tools enhance decision making for local authorities, and the assessments can be replicated in

User-friendly, evidence-based scientific tools to support sanitation decisions are still limited in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. This commentary provides lessons learned from the development of two sanitation decision support tools developed in collaboration with stakeholders in Uganda. We engaged with stakeholders in a variety of ways to effectively obtain their input in the development of the decision support tools. Key lessons learned included: tailoring tools to stakeholder decision-making needs; simplifying the tools as much as possible for ease of application and use; creating an enabling environment that allows active stakeholder participation; having a dedicated and responsive team to plan and execute stakeholder engagement activities; involving stakeholders early in the process; having funding sources that are flexible and long-term; and including resources for the acquisition of local data. This reflection provides benchmarks for future research and the development of tools that utilize scientific data and emphasizes the importance of engaging with stakeholders in the development process.

Sanitation planners make complex decisions in the delivery of sanitation services to achieve health outcomes. We present findings from a stakeholder engagement workshop held in Kampala, Uganda, to educate, interact with, and solicit feedback from participants on how the relevant scientific literature on pathogens can be made more accessible to practitioners to support decision-making. We targeted Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) practitioners involved in different levels of service delivery. Practitioners revealed that different sanitation planning tools are used to inform decision-making; however, most of these tools are not user-friendly or adapted to meet their needs. Most stakeholders (68%) expressed familiarity with pathogens, yet less than half (46%) understood that fecal coliforms were bacteria and used as indicators for fecal pollution. A number of stakeholders were unaware that fecal indicator bacteria do not behave and persist the same as helminths, protozoa, or viruses, making fecal indicator bacteria inadequate for assessing pathogen reductions for all pathogen groups. This suggests a need for awareness and capacity development around pathogens found in excreta. The findings underscore the importance to engage stakeholders in the development of support tools for sanitation planning and highlighted broader opportunities to bridge science with practice in the WASH sector.

Rotavirus (RV) and diarrheagenic Escherichia coli are waterborne pathogens commonly causing diarrhea in children below five years old worldwide. Our study is a first step toward a loads-concentrations-risk modeling and scenario analysis framework. We analyzed current and future human RV and indicator E. Coli (EC) emissions from sanitation facilities to surface waters in Uganda using two process-based models. Emissions were estimated for the baseline year 2015 and for three scenarios in 2030 using population, excretion rates, sanitation types, and wastewater treatment. The first model is a downscaled GloWPa-Rota H1 version, producing emissions at a 1-km2 resolution. The second model is newly developed for Kampala and adds emissions from pit latrines and septic tanks excluded in the first model. The scenarios Business as Usual, Industrious, and Low Emissions reflect government prospects in sanitation coverage and wastewater treatment. For the first model, 6.14 ? 1014 RV particles d-1 and 1.31 ? 1012 EC colony-forming units (CFU) d-1 are emitted to surface waters in 2015. The RV emissions are expected to increase in 2030 by 75% for Business as Usual and 212% for Industrious and decrease by 58% in Low Emissions. Emissions from the second model are higher for Kampala than in the first model, at 3.74 ? 1014 vs. 5.95 ? 1013 RV particles d-1 and 8.18 ? 1011 vs. 1.75 ? 1011 EC CFU d-1 in 2015, most of which come from the onsite-not-contained category. Simulated emissions for Kampala show the importance of including onsite sanitation in our modeling. Our study is replicable in other locations and helps identify key emission sources, their hotspots, and the importance of wastewater treatment. The scenarios can guide future sanitation safety planning.