From Joe Brown
Fred Pearce describes a key caveat to announcements in 2010 that the Millennium Development Goal target for access to safe drinking water had been met (12 April, p 12). In his article, I am quoted as saying that the World Health Organization has been silent on this issue. To clarify, I was referring to the fact that there has been no formal response to published estimates of the gap between what is “improved” and what is “safe”.
The WHO/UNICEF-supported Joint Monitoring Programme, which measures global progress towards water and sanitation targets, has repeatedly articulated that access to an “improved” water source is a useful but imperfect metric, quite different from more direct measures of microbiological or chemical water safety. This is widely acknowledged in the sector, including by the WHO, and there is consensus that much work remains to be done to expand global access to safe and sustainable water.
The purpose of our publication on the subject, cited in Pearce’s article, was to describe some of the complexities that may apply to both current and future water metrics, and to encourage caution in their interpretation.
Atlanta, Georgia, US
