Indicator 6.1.1 Proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services

Indicator 6.1.1: Proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services

Target 6.1: By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all

World Health Organization (WHO)

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP)

Definition:

The proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services is defined as the proportion of population using an improved drinking water source which is accessible on premises, available when needed and free from faecal and priority chemical contamination. ‘Improved’ drinking water sources include: piped supplies, boreholes and tubewells, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater, water kiosks, and packaged and delivered water.

Concepts:

The term ‘drinking water source’ refers to the point where people collect water for drinking and not the origin of the water supplied. For example, water collected from a distribution network that draws water from a surface water reservoir would be classified as piped water, while water collected directly from a lake or river would be classified as surface water.

‘Improved’ drinking water sources include the following: piped water, boreholes or tubewells, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater, water kiosks, and packaged or delivered water.

‘Unimproved’ drinking water sources include: unprotected dug wells, unprotected springs, and surface water (rivers, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, streams, canals, and irrigation channels), all of which are by nature of their design and construction unlikely to deliver safe water.

A water source is ‘accessible on premises’ if the point of collection is within the dwelling, compound, yard or plot, or water is delivered to the household.

Drinking water is ‘available when needed’ if households report having ‘sufficient’ water, or water is available ‘most of the time’ (i.e. at least 12 hours per day or 4 days per week).

‘Free from faecal and priority chemical contamination’ requires that drinking water meets international standards for microbiological and chemical water quality specified in the WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality. For the purposes of global monitoring the priority indicator of microbiological contamination is E. coli (or thermotolerant coliforms), and the priority chemical contaminants are arsenic and fluoride.

For detailed guidance on water quality, please refer to the most recent version of the WHO Guidelines for drinking water quality:

https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/water-sanitation-and-health/water-safety-and-quality/drinking-water-quality-guidelines

Percent (%) – Proportion of population

Data sources included in the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) database are:

• Censuses, which in principle collect basic data from all people living within a country and are led by national statistical offices.
• Household surveys, which collect data from a subset of households. These may target national, rural, or urban populations, or more limited project or sub-national areas. An appropriate sample design is necessary for survey results to be representative, and surveys are often led by or reviewed and approved by national statistical organizations.
• Administrative data, which may consist of information collected by government or non-government entities involved in the delivery or oversight of services. Examples include water and sanitation inventories and databases, and reports of regulators.
• Other datasets may be available such as compilations by international or regional initiatives (e.g. Eurostat), studies conducted by research institutes, or technical advice received during country consultations.

Access to water, sanitation and hygiene are considered core socio-economic and health indicators, as well as key determinants of child survival, maternal, and children’s health, family wellbeing, and economic productivity. Drinking water, sanitation and hygiene facilities are also used in constructing wealth quintiles used by many integrated household surveys to analyse inequalities between rich and poor. Access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene are therefore core indicators for many household surveys and censuses. In high-income countries where household surveys or censuses do not collect detailed information on the types of facilities used by households, the JMP relies on administrative records.

Data on availability and quality of drinking water are currently available from both household surveys and from government departments responsible for drinking water supply and regulators. In many low- and middle-income countries, existing water quality data from regulatory authorities is limited, especially for rural areas and populations using non-piped supplies. To complement regulatory data, an increasing number of low- and middle-income countries are collecting nationally representative data on drinking water quality through multi-topic household surveys. Beginning in 2012, a water quality module was developed standardized by the JMP in collaboration with UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) programme. Integration of water quality testing has become a feasible option due to the increased availability of affordable and accurate testing procedures and their adaptation for use by household survey experts. The growing interest in ensuring the implementation of water quality testing in these surveys can, to a large extent, be attributed to the incorporation of drinking water quality in the SDG global indicator for ‘safely managed drinking water services’. Data gaps will be reduced even more as regulation becomes more widespread in low- and middle-income countries.

Some datasets available to the JMP are not representative of national, rural or urban populations, or may be representative of only a subset of these populations (e.g. the population using piped water supplies). The JMP enters datasets into the global database when they represent at least 20% of the national, urban or rural populations. However, datasets representing less than 80% of the relevant population, or which are considered unreliable or inconsistent with other datasets covering similar populations, are not used in the production of estimates (see section 2.6, Data Acceptance in JMP Methodology: 2017 update and SDG baselines).

The population data used by the JMP, including the proportion of the population living in urban and rural areas, are those routinely updated by the UN Population Division (World Population Prospects: https://population.un.org/wpp/; World Urbanization Projects: https://population.un.org/wup)).

National statistics offices; ministries of water, health, and environment; regulators of drinking water service providers.

Data are widely available on the type and location of drinking water sources used by households. Data on availability and safety of drinking water are increasingly available through a combination of household surveys and administrative sources including regulators, but definitions have yet to be standardized. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) has been collaborating with international survey programmes (such as the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey programme) and national survey programmes to develop standardized questions that address the SDG criteria for service levels, as well as a module for testing water quality in household surveys. The JMP gives high importance to extending these collaborations to reduce data gaps, ensure consistency and to progressively improve the quality and comparability of data used for national, regional and global estimates.

The production of estimates follows a consistent series of steps, which are explained in this and following sections:

1. Identification of appropriate national datasets

2. Extraction of data from national datasets into harmonized tables of data inputs

3. Use of the data inputs to model country estimates

4. Consultation with countries to review the estimates

5. Aggregation of country estimates to create regional and global estimates

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) compiles national data on drinking water from a wide range of different data sources. Household surveys and censuses provide information on types of drinking water sources, and also indicate if sources are accessible on premises. These data sources often have information on the availability of water and increasingly on the quality of water at the household level, through direct testing of drinking water for faecal or chemical contamination. These data are combined with data on availability and compliance with drinking water quality standards (faecal and chemical) from administrative reporting or regulatory bodies.

The JMP uses original microdata to produce its own tabulations by using populations weights (or household weights multiplied by de jure household size), where possible. However, in many cases microdata are not readily accessible so relevant data are transcribed from reports available in various formats (PDFs, Word files, Excel spreadsheets, etc.) if data are tabulated for the proportion of the population, or household/dwelling. National data from each country, area, or territory are recorded in the JMP country files, with water, sanitation, and hygiene data recorded on separate sheets. Country files can be downloaded from the JMP website: https://washdata.org/data/downloads

The JMP calculates the proportion of population using improved water sources by fitting a linear regression line to all available data inputs within the reference period, starting from the year 2000. To calculate the proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services, three ratios must be calculated: the proportion of the population using improved water supplies which are accessible on premises, have water available when needed, and are free from contamination. Those ratios are then multiplied with the proportion of the population using improved water sources, respectively. Safely managed drinking water services is taken as the minimum of these three indicators for any given year. National estimates are generated as weighted averages of the separate estimates for urban and rural areas, using population data from the most recent report of the United Nations Population Division.

For more details on JMP rules and methods, please refer to recent JMP progress reports and “JMP Methodology: 2017 update and SDG baselines”: https://washdata.org/reports/jmp-2017-methodology

2024-09-27

World Health Organization (WHO)

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

All targets under Goal 6, as well as targets 1.2, 1.4, 2.2, 3.2, 3.8, 3.9, 4a, 5.4 and 11.1