PONE-D-21-26335

Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) practices in Southern Africa: a scoping review

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nkeka Peter Tseole,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Manuscript Number: PONE-D-21-26335

Full Title: Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) practices in Southern Africa: a scoping review

Short Title: Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene practices in Southern Africa:a scoping reviews

General Comment

1. “ Rural areas are the most affected by barriers to improved WaSH facilities compared to urban settings.

Is that population growth is a barrier for rural set up or urban in southern Africa? One of the team is population growth,

Specific Comment

Abstract:

2. “ The general themes that emerged included geographical inequalities, climate change, investment on WaSH resources, low levels of knowledge on water borne diseases and ineffective local community engagement”

Is this general for barriers and facilitator for WASH, please it need to specify and indicate clearly for the reader?

Introduction:

3. The second paragraph in References citation indicated that “Inadequate water, access to improved sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) are global health challenges affecting about one-third of the world’s population [8, 10].” since, the reference system style of the journal is Vancouver (number system) , better start with 1, then 2 , 3.4…..in an ascending manner. rather than start with 8? Like [8, 10] indicated the manuscript.

4. Paragraph 3 line four, “ However, people still lack adequate information on WaSH leading to poor sanitation and hygiene practices.” It needs citation or evidence to this sentence?

Method

5. Inclusion and Exclusion section “ We excluded reviews, i.e. systematic, scoping and meta-analysis.” It is not clear that, was there any systematic review and metanalysis in similar topic in the study setting? if that is the case, what is the importance of this review? How many did you get the three systematic, scoping, and metanalysis?

Result

6. In the eligibility criteria; “ Five (5) additional records were identified from the reference lists of eligible articles and were included for full text review” This is not clear for your inclusion, is that a grey literature ? or you already acknowledge as a limitation as included only published articles?

Discussion

7. In the first summary paragraph “The following barrier themes emerged from the analysis: (1) geographical inequalities, (2) climate change, (3) low investment on WaSH infrastructure, (4) low knowledge levels on waterborne diseases, (5) ineffective local community engagement.

In the data abstraction sheet both barriers and facilitators are put clearly, while in this paragraph Please also show the facilitators in this summary finding paragraph?

Reviewer #2: The paper is relevant and indeed brings out the key issues underlying constrains on the progressive development of the WASH sector. Below are comments: On the abstract, in these days we now refer to access not coverage, so kindly review. Regarding the geographical inequalities, kindly expand more on what you mean on that, (ie, is it access by road, or underdeveloped areas. Just checking regarding your area on in adequate knowledge on WASH practice- " in your review no paper mentioned issues of culture and norms as barriers to knowledge" I thought this could have come out. Regarding low investments, no paper mentioned the role of policies or by laws and technology that can support such interventions. " just checking if you missed, as this is a critical piece for sustainability.

If the above areas are addressed, the paper can be accepted

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Scoping review_PONE-D-21-26335.docx

Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) practices in Southern Africa: a scoping review

PONE-D-21-26335R1

Dear Dr. Nkeka Peter Tseole,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Balasubramani Ravindran, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Manuscript Number: PONE-D-21-26335

Full Title: Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) practices in Southern Africa: a scoping review

Short Title: Barriers and facilitators to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene practices in Southern Africa: a scoping review.

The author addressed all comments in the revised version manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is well revised and in addition the revision is well articulated in the rebuttal letter

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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