Sandy Cairncross - PhD FRSA MICE MCIWEM

Background

A public health engineer by profession, and an epidemiologist by vocation, Dr Sandy Cairncross is interested in environmental interventions for disease control and their technical and policy aspects. Most of his career has been spent in research and teaching, and about a third in developing countries implementing water, sanitation and public health programmes.

With a PhD in soil mechanics from the University of Cambridge, he built water supplies in Lesotho, Southern Africa before spending a year at LSHTM in 1977. During this time he worked on several books, including a textbook on environmental health engineering in the tropics which is now in its second edition. He then spent seven years as a water and sanitation engineer for the Government of newly-independent Mozambique, before returning to LSHTM in 1984.

Here, he leads a research group working on environmental health in developing countries. From 1992 to 1995 he was on leave of absence with Unicef in Ouagadougou, West Africa, where with WHO he set up an interagency technical team to support national Guinea worm eradication programmes in the region. His group's work at LSHTM has involved studies of the health impact of environmental interventions such as water supply, sanitation and mosquito control, and of operational and policy aspects of water supply, low-cost sanitation, surface water drainage, and solid waste management.

He is an editor of Tropical Medicine & International Health, and a trustee of Water Aid.

Teaching/Research

Sandy runs a study unit on Tropical Environmental Health, as well as contributing to a number of other courses and study units on topics such as water & sanitation, PHC and Guinea worm eradication.

He also leads the Environmental Health Group, whose current research relates to hygiene promotion, monitoring the coverage of water supplies, sanitation and hygiene, wastewater irrigation and other related topics.

Disciplines:

Policy analysis, Epidemiology, Operational research.

Research areas:

Hygiene, Sanitation, Diarrhoeal diseases, Environment, Water.

Publications

CAIRNCROSS S, Shordt K, Zacharia S, Govindan BK. 2005. What causes sustainable changes in hygiene behaviour? A cross-sectional study from Kerala, India. Social Science & Medicine 61(10):2212-20.

CAIRNCROSS S, Valdmanis V. 2004. Water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion. Disease Control Priorities Project, Working Paper no. 28. Washington DC: National Institutes of Health. www.fic.nih.gov/dcpp/wps.html

CAIRNCROSS S. 2004. The Case for Marketing Sanitation. Water & Sanitation Programme Field Note. Nairobi: The World Bank.

CAIRNCROSS S, 2003. Editorial: Handwashing with soap – a new way to prevent ARIs? Tropical Medicine & International Health 8 (8): 677-679

CAIRNCROSS S, O’Neill D, McCoy A, Sethi D 2003. Environmental Health and the Burden of Disease; a Guidance Note. London: Department for International Development. (Also published in French)

Curtis V, CAIRNCROSS S. 2003. Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review. Lancet Infectious Diseases 3: 275-281.

CAIRNCROSS S. 2003. Sanitation in the developing world; current status and future solutions. International Journal of Environmental Health Research 13: S123-S131.

CAIRNCROSS S. 2003. Editorial: water supply and sanitation; some misconceptions. Tropical Medicine & International Health 8 (3): 193-195.

CAIRNCROSS S, Muller R, Zagaria N. (2002). 'Dracunculiasis (Guinea Worm Disease) and the Eradication Initiative', Clinical microbiology reviews, 15 (2): 223-246.

Moraes LRS, Cancio JA, CAIRNCROSS AM and HUTTLY SRA. (2003). 'Impact of drainage and sewerage on diarrhoea in poor urban areas in Salvador, Brazil.' Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 97: 153-158