Good news on MDG target on water, bad news on sanitation

Riaz K Tayob

A WHO/UNICEF report on sanitation and drinking water has found that the progress made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on drinking water is encouraging. However, the same cannot be said of the sanitation target.

Geneva: While there is good news on progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) No. 7 on water, much more needs to be done to come close to the sanitation target, a WHO/UNICEF progress report on sanitation and drinking water has found.

(MDG No. 7 comprises four targets. The first is to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources. The second is to reduce biodiversity loss, achieving by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss. The third target is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The fourth is to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.)

The report of the Joint Monitoring Program of WHO/UNICEF on progress on sanitation and drinking water says that the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target of the Millennium Development Goals, with 87% of the world’s population, or about 5.9 billion people, using safe drinking-water sources.

Even so, about 884 million people still do not get their drinking water from improved sources.

However, for almost 39% of the world population, or over 2.6 billion people living without improved sanitation facilities, much more needs to be done to come close to the sanitation target, says the report.

If the current trend continues unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation target by almost 1 billion people.

At the current rate of progress, the world will miss the MDG target by 13 percentage points, unless huge efforts are made. The target is 23% of the population without improved sanitation, but it is projected to reduce to 36% by 2015 from a base level of 46% in 1990.

According to the joint report, even if the target is met, there would still be 1.7 billion people without access to basic sanitation.

The third target of MDG Goal No. 7 calls on countries to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

According to the joint report, the riskiest sanitation practice of all, open defecation, is on the decline worldwide, and decreased globally from 25% in 1990 to 17% in 2008, representing a fall of 168 million people practising open defecation since 1990.

However, this practice is still widespread in Southern Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), where an estimated 44% of the population defecate in the open. Despite the world’s population being almost equally divided between urban and rural dwellers, the vast majority without access to water and sanitation live in rural areas.

Seven out of 10 people without basic sanitation are rural inhabitants, and more than eight out of 10 people without access to improved drinking water sources live in rural areas. A similar disparity is found between the poor and the non-poor.

A comparison between the richest and poorest 20% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa reveals that the richest are more than twice as likely to use an improved drinking water source and almost five times more likely to use improved sanitation facilities. The poorest 20% is around 16 times more likely to practise open defecation than the richest quintile.

Although there is insufficient data, country data that is available confirms similar disparities elsewhere. Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene claim the lives of an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five each year. Lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene affects health and quality of life for children, impacting women and girls first and foremost, says the report.

For monitoring purposes, the use of improved drinking-water sources has been equated to access to safe drinking water, but not all improved sources in actual fact provide drinking water that is safe.

“Water quality remains an elusive indicator in the global monitoring activities of the JMP (Joint Monitoring Program).”

According to the report, this challenge is being addressed including through a pilot survey. Results were obtained in the pilot study from each of eight countries (Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Jordan, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Tajikistan) using a randomly selected sample of 1,600 water supplies and 160 households.

The pilot survey found that microbiological compliance with WHO guidelines varied between countries. On average, compliance was close to 90% for piped water sources, and between 40% and 70% for other improved sources.

The WHO drinking water quality guidelines provide specific indicators of microbial contamination and chemical hazards but allow countries to adapt guideline values to their own socioeconomic contexts.

The report notes that the third edition of the guidelines shifts the emphasis away from a single point water quality testing to a system of integrated risk assessment and incremental management.

The pilot survey demonstrated the technical feasibility of such measurements, notwithstanding the established weaknesses of the use of the selected indicators (which were tested - like E. Coli) for microbial safety.

It also showed that such a periodic water quality survey at a global level was economically not viable. The report states that any new target set beyond 2015 will have to address water quality, which will have to be measured or estimated in a meaningful and cost-effective manner.

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