Output details

Accounting for water quality in monitoring access to safe drinking-water as part of the Millennium Development Goals: lessons from five countries

During the past year there has been a lot of publicity surrounding the announcement by the Joint Monitoring Programme that the global target for access to water has been achieved. The applied definition of access is disputed since it does not mean safe water. This paper demonstrates for the first time that access to safe water is significantly less than the JMP measure and that the MDG for water may still be below target. The output from the paper has been reported by Scientific American. It is also influencing decisions about future direction of WHO for access to water.