#ms04: Drinking Water

Access to and use of safe water are prerequisites for fighting hunger and poverty as a human right. Inadequate access to at least basic drinking water services is a root cause of malnutrition, according to WHH’s SFNS approach. Poor environmental health conditions and related waterborne diseases are underlying causes of malnutrition. Ensuring good drinking water quality is an important element of preventing waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, environmental enteropathy, and intestinal worms. There is clear evidence that improvements in WASH service delivery will result in health gains. The drinking water indicator is useful to assess whether the right to clean drinking water is being met and how successful the related interventions have been. Safe drinking water is also important as a precondition to achieving sustainable food and nutrition security.

The #ms Drinking Water indicator assesses the number of households making use of at least basic drinking water services. It comprises households that both consume drinking water obtained from an improved water source and handle their drinking water in a way that bears a low risk of contamination between the point of extraction (PoE) and the point of use (PoU).

Collect the following data by conducting individual interviews with a representative sample (WHH sampling guidelines) of the households targeted in your project.

Questions should be addressed to the person (adult) who is responsible for handling the household's drinking water.

This indicator requires a baseline and comparison value(s) to yield interesting information on project outcomes. At minimum, it should therefore be collected as part of both a baseline and an endline survey. A mid-term survey is optional.

• More information: #ms04 Drinking Water Handbook (EN)
• External resources: JMP Definitions Water Sanitation Hygiene 2022 (EN)

Disaggregate the data by wealth, location and other relevant criteria.

This is a 'Measuring Success' (#ms) indicator. It is obligatory for all WHH projects to integrate all #ms indicators that align with the project context, with a minimum requirement of utilizing at least one indicator (and implementing one #ms qualitative tool).

1) Data for the #ms Drinking Water indicator can be collected at any time of the year. However, because the rainy and dry season affect the water availability and as such water service levels, you should consider always collecting baseline and endline data in the same season.

2) In addition to survey skills, enumerators must have a strong grasp of the concept of improved/ unimproved water sources and safe water handling. They should be specially trained on how to conduct surveys and make observations in WASH facilities before collecting data.