IRES Water Quality and Household Energy in Post-Earthquake Nepal: Long Term Protection of Community Health

IRES Water Quality and Household Energy in Post-Earthquake Nepal: Long Term Protection of Community Health<br/><br/>Non-technical description<br/><br/>This IRES award brings together a diverse community of researchers and students from the United States and Nepal. In addition to working directly with local and international scientists, U.S. students will communicate to other undergraduate and graduate students through blogging about international research experience. Participants will also develop education materials, with help from local collaborators, to help inform community members in host countries. Upon return to their home institution, students will present their results through professional seminars and scientific publications. The students trained by this proposed program will be the future leaders of an elite international development workforce diminishing the impact of infectious disease on human health by nurturing the interaction of persons of different disciplines and skill sets to meet water, sanitation, and household energy needs worldwide.<br/><br/>Technical description<br/><br/>This U.S. - Nepal international research experience for students (IRES) project supports partnership between researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the Environment and Public Health Organization, Nepal (ENPHO), the Center for Rural Technology Nepal (CRT-N), the Institute of Engineering, Nepal (IOE) and the Nepal Department of Health Services. Over a three-year period, this program will engage three U.S. undergraduate and three U.S. graduate students annually, for a total of eighteen participants, at multiple research sites in Nepal to study the aftermath of natural disaster like earthquake on microbial water quality compounded with sanitation practices. Following training and research preparation at UIUC, students will travel to Nepal, where they will be co-mentored by professors and researchers from the partner institutes. Each student's research training will include experience with planning and implementation of field strategies for drinking water sampling in the affected areas; interviewing local people to understand the sanitation practices and the sustainability of relief efforts; and data collection on waterborne illnesses. Following each portion of fieldwork and sample processing in Kathmandu, participants return to UIUC to prepare collected samples for metagenomics, 16S and 18S sequencing, qPCR and bioinformatics analysis. These will be studied to identify opportunistic pathogens in collected water sample, and patterns of presence with different sanitation practices. Results will provide new insights on the risks of outbreak of diarrheal diseases after extreme natural events in developing world, and how human practices may increase or decrease these risks.