Improved water does not mean safe water

This work presents a model for estimating global access to drinking water that meets World Health Organization (WHO) water quality guidelines. The currently accepted international estimate of global access to safe water, the WHO and United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) report, estimates the population with access to water service infrastructure that is classified as improved and unimproved. The JMP report uses access to improved water sources as a proxy for access to safe water, but improved water sources do not always meet drinking water quality guidelines. Therefore, this report likely overestimates the number of people with access to safe water. Based on the JMP estimate, the United Nations has recently announced that the world has reached the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for access to safe water. Our new framework employs a statistical model that incorporates source water quality, water supply interruptions, water storage practices, and point of use water treatment to estimate access to safe water, resulting in a figure that is lower than the JMP estimate of global access to safe water. We estimate that at least 28% of the world does not have access to safe water today, as compared to the JMP estimate of 12%. These findings indicate that much more work is needed on the international scale to meet the MDG target for access to safe water.