Water and sanitation

Water and sanitation in Viet Nam
UN Photo/Kibae Park
A hill tribe woman washes clothes outside her home in Sapa, Viet Nam.

Lack of sanitation is a serious health risk and an affront to human dignity. It affects billions of people around the world, particularly the poor and disadvantaged. If the trend continues as currently projected, by 2015, 2.7 billion people will be without access to basic sanitation.

Reaching the MDGs drinking water and sanitation target requires upgrading infrastructure in order to provide services to an additional 1.1 billion people and sanitation to an additional 1.6 billion people by 2015. It will also require action to prevent current and future infrastructure falling into disrepair.

General information

Partners and links

Prevention and awareness

Publications and documents

Community water supply report thumb

Water safety planning for small community water supplies

The manual is a complete instruction of how to implement water safety plan in small community supplies, including guidance, examples and case studies for water suppliers in rural areas.

Water supply and sanitation sector assessments: A guide for country-level action

  • Scaling up household water treatment among low-income populations
    pdf, 946kb
    This report examines the evidence to date regarding the scalability of HWTS. It seeks to consolidate existing knowledge and experience and distill the lessons learnt. Its primary aims are to 1) review the development and evolution of leading household water treatment technologies in their efforts to achieve scale, 2) identify the main constraints that they have encountered and 3) recommend ways forward.
  • WHO guidelines for drinking-water quality
    This publication provides all information, instructions, guidance on water quality issues, including water safety plan (Chapter 4), water testing criteria and standards.

Highlighted publications

World health statistics 2013
  • World Health Statistics 2013
    World Health Statistics 2013 contains WHO’s annual compilation of health-related data for its 194 Member States, and includes a summary of the progress made towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and associated targets.
Global report on the status of road safety 2013
  • Global status report on road safety 2013
    The Global status report on road safety 2013 presents information on road safety from 182 countries, accounting for almost 99% of the world’s population. The report indicates that worldwide the total number of road traffic deaths remains unacceptably high at 1.24 million per year.
  • Atlas of health and climate
    The Atlas of health and climate is a product of this unique collaboration between the meteorological and public health communities. It provides sound scientific information on the connections between weather and climate and major health challenges.
WPSAR cover