Overview
Since 2017, the World
Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme for Water
Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) reports on progress
towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 6.1
have included estimates on the quality of drinking water
supplies. This represents a significant advance in global
monitoring of drinking water services.
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 the regulator data, an
increasing number of low- and middle-income countries
are collecting nationally or sub-nationally representative
data on drinking water quality through multi-topic
household surveys.
Beginning in 2012, a water quality module was
developed and standardized by the WHO/UNICEF
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’.
This thematic report presents the experience of using the
water quality module in representative household surveys.
