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Making water safer: cost-effective surveillance of urban water supplies in developing countries

Is enough being done to monitor the quality of water in urban areas of developing countries? Can contamination of water stored in homes of the poor be reduced? How can the monitoring capacity of local environmental health staff be improved and health sector staff play a bigger role in water supply decision-making?

Two manuals developed by the Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health and WEDC set out guidelines on improved surveillance of water supplied and stored by the urban poor. Drawing on extensive research in Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, it shows how to identify the causes of contamination and design technical and educational interventions. Replicable pro-poor programmes of hygiene education, water source improvement and reduction of contaminants in distribution systems are described. Evidence is presented that small incremental improvements in water supply and water hygiene can lead to significant health and socio-economic gains among the poor.

In urban areas there has been an overemphasis on monitoring of piped water with insufficient attention to alternative communal sources of water which are widely used by people unable to connect to, or pay for, piped water supplies. Planners have not appreciated that in poor households water quality is often worse both at the source and within the home. Lack of information about how the poor use and pay for water has led to technological, economic and institutional mistakes. More research into local water economies is needed to understand patterns of informal sale of water by vendors or by households with connections to utility supplies who sell water to neighbours.

We need to abandon the misplaced idea that community participation is only suitable for rural water projects. Lack of progress in increasing urban access to safe and adequate water supplies shows the need for communities to take responsibility for maintaining facilities. We need to look at urban areas from the perspective that they are large aggregations of small communities, rather than a single large entity.

Other key points include:

The urban poor are highly dependent on non-piped sources of water such as springs, wells, boreholes and small-scale vendors. For example, in Kampala the proportion of households using springs for at least part of their domestic water needs is 62 per cent.
Too little attention has been paid to the feasibility of improving alternative supplies as medium-term solutions that will deliver health gains.
There has been insufficient attention regarding how communal water supplies can be sustained in poor neighbourhoods and limited flexibility in payment options.

The report calls for surveillance initiatives to plug current gaps in knowledge in order to help design flexible and affordable levels of service provision. It recommends:

Dividing urban areas up into discrete surveillance zones based on socio-economic level, population density and water source use patterns, thus enabling the needs of urban poor (who are at greatest risk from infectious disease) to be prioritised.
Understanding what water is used for drinking and food preparation and not wasting resources on testing water used for cleaning and laundry.
Using opportunities created by surveillance programmes to generate dialogue and greater cooperation between water suppliers, policy makers and health personnel.
Developing participatory approaches to hygiene education and community-based initiatives to improved water supply and hygiene.

The manuals form part of the material being prepared for the 3rd edition of the WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality and will be launched at the WHO Guidelines Seminar at the IWA World Congress in Melbourne on April 12th 2002.

Source(s):
‘Urban water supply surveillance - a reference manual’, WEDC and Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health, University of Surrey, by Guy Howard January 2002 Full document.
‘Water quality surveillance: a practical guide’, WEDC, Loughborough University by Guy Howard, January 2002 Full document.

Funded by: DFID (IUDD), WHO

id21 Research Highlight: 5 April 2002

Further Information:
Guy Howard
WEDC
Loughborough Univeristy
Leicestershire LE11 3TU
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1509 222885
Fax: +44 (0)1509 211079
Contact the contributor: A.G.Howard@lboro.ac.uk

Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), University of Loughborough, UK

Steve Pedley
Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health
University of Surrey
Guildford GU2 5XH
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1483 879209
Fax: +44 (0)1483 879971
Contact the contributor: s.pedley@surrey.ac.uk

University of Surrey, UK

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