[Survey on the current status of drinking water supply, latrines and the health knowledge of residents in the remote rural areas of several provinces of China].

A survey on the current status of drinking water supply, latrines and the health knowledge of residents in the remote rural areas of the southwest and northwest of China was reported. A stratified cluster sampling method was adopted in the survey. 83 poverty countries and 74,900 families were involved in the survey and four hundred thousands data were obtained by home visiting. The results showed that the coverage of rural latrines, sanitary latrines and safe night-soil disposal in the surveyed regions had reached 90.0%, 6.0% and 25.0% of populations respectively. The coverage of safe-drinking water was 57.6% of homes and no adequate supply of drinking water was 13.2% of homes; Many responders in the survey did not have the knowledge related to intestinal infectious diseases. There were 42.3% of them not knowing that night-soil was the source of infectious diseases, 56.2% of them not knowing that fly could spread infectious diseases and 70.0%-82.7% of them not knowing the ways of spreading intestinal infectious disease.