The combination of safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation facilities is a precondition for health and for success in the fight against poverty, hunger, child deaths and gender inequality. In adopting the Millennium Development Goals, the countries of the world pledged to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, the world is well on its way to meeting the drinking water target by 2015, but progress in sanitation is stalled in many developing regions . This report provides the latest estimates and trends on where we stand today.--Publisher's description.

Safe drinking water, sanitation and good hygiene are fundamental to health, survival, growth and development. However, these basic necessities are still a luxury for many of the world s poor people. Over 1.1 billion of our fellow citizens do not use drinking water from improved sources, while 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Safe drinking water and basic sanitation are so obviously essential to health that they risk being taken for granted. Efforts to prevent death from diarrhoea or to reduce the burden of such diseases as ascaris, dracunculiasis, hookworm, schistosomiasis and trachoma are doomed to failure unless people have access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Lack of basic sanitation indirectly inhibits the learning abilities of millions of school-aged children who are infested with intestinal worms transmitted through inadequate sanitation facilities and poor hygiene. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have set us on a common course to push back poverty, inequality, hunger and illness. The world has pledged to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Entering the International Decade for Action, Water for Life, 2005-2015, this report looks at the challenge of meeting the MDG target for drinking water and sanitation. Achieving the MDG drinking water and sanitation target poses two major challenges: a rapid pace of urbanization, which requires a major effort even to keep up the current coverage levels; a huge backlog of rural people unserved with basic sanitation and safe drinking water, which calls for an intensive mobilization of resources to reduce the vast coverage gap between urban and rural populations.

This report deals primarily with the analysis of the drinking-water and sanitation situation in the member countries of the Thematic Working Group on Water Sanitation and Hygiene (TWG WSH) based on statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) updated in 2015. This document also provides key information on selected health and development issues for TWG WSH member countries. The member countries covered in this report are: Brunei Darussalam Cambodia China Indonesia Japan the Lao People s Democratic Republic Malaysia Mongolia Myanmar the Philippines the Republic of Korea Singapore Thailand and Viet Nam. Previous documents prepared by WHO for the TWG WSH include extensive analyses of the drinking-water sanitation and hygiene sector as a whole based on country-level information. A key finding of this report is that the TWG WSH region has succeeded in meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for drinking-water and sanitation which is to halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation (UN 2017). Individually nine TWG WSH countries achieved the MDG sanitation target but four countries (i.e. Cambodia Indonesia Mongolia and the Philippines) did not. All TWG WSH countries met the MDG drinking-water target except Mongolia which fell short of the target by 13 percentage points. Overall 77% of people in the TWG WSH region are using improved sanitation facilities whereas 94% are using improved drinking-water sources (UNICEF and WHO 2015). Despite an impressive effort made to provide drinking-water and sanitation infrastructure to the residents in this region about one quarter of the population still lacks access to improved sanitation and 7% lacks access to improved drinking-water. Water-related diseases including diarrhoeal diseases are significant causes of death among children under 5 years old in the region. Almost 30 000 people in the TWG WSH region especially children under 5 die each year due to water sanitation and hygiene related diseases (WHO 2014).

WHO UNICEF monitoring programme for water supply and sanitation

Despite significant progress in water and sanitation much still remains to be done. This report shows how the world has changed since 1990. It provides an assessment of progress towards the MDG target and insight into the remaining challenges. Section A provides an overview of progress against the parameters specified in the MDG target for water and sanitation in both urban and rural areas. It presents data for the world as a whole and compares progress across regions. The report goes on to examine trends over the MDG period by region and by level of service. It pays particular attention to the numbers of people who have gained the highest level of service in drinking water supply - piped water on premises - and those with no service at all who use surface water for drinking and practice open defecation. In order to understand the nature of progress it is important to look carefully at the way improvements in water and sanitation have benefited different socioeconomic groups. This report sheds light on equality gaps between urban and rural dwellers and between the richest and poorest segments of the population. It presents several new ways to visualize progress on extending service to the poor designed to reveal the nature of inequalities and give the reader insight into the great challenge that still exists in ensuring that progress reaches everyone. The JMP was established in 1990 and is celebrating its Jubilee Year in 2015. Section B provides a retrospective analysis of the evolution of water sanitation and hygiene monitoring over the past 25 years.

"Even though progress towards the MDG target represents important gains in access for billions of people around the world, it has been uneven. Sharp geographic, sociocultural and economic inequalities in access persist and sometimes have increased. This report presents examples of unequal progress among marginalized and vulnerable groups. Section 1 presents the status of and trends in access to improved drinking water sources and sanitation. Section 2 provides a snapshot of inequalities in access to improved drinking water sources and sanitation. Section 3 presents efforts to strengthen monitoring of access to safe drinking water and sanitation services under a post-2015 development agenda, as well as the challenges associated with these efforts."--Publisher's website.

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) reports every two years on progress towards the drinking-water and sanitation target under Millennium Development Goal 7. This target calls for halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation between 1990 and 2015. Estimates presented in its 2012 update report describe the situation at the end 2010 and supersede those of the JMP update published in March 2010.--Publisher description.