Quality matters: incorporating water quality into water access monitoring in rural Malawi

ABSTRACT

The Sustainable Development Goals offer an ambitious plan to achieve universal access to water that is safe and affordable. This article uses data from 139 household surveys from 13 villages in rural Malawi and Petrifilm quality testing of 27 drinking water sources to highlight areas where the goals’ proposed monitoring framework might not fully capture water quality. Households make complex water decisions and sometimes choose to use unsafe sources. Households generally do not use water treatment but universally practise water storage. This article argues for improved monitoring to more effectively and accurately measure sustainable water access.

KEYWORDS:

• Water access
• safely managed water
• water quality
• sustainable development
• Malawi

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Alison Norris for introducing me to the study area.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There is a large stack of wood visible in the background of Figure 2. This piped water source is at the office of a commercial tobacco farm, and this wood is used in the tobacco curing process. This wood is not available to nearby residents, nor was any firewood observed in the study area away from this farm.

Additional information

Funding

The Kent State University Research Council and the Kent State Department of Geography funded this research. The GIS Health and Hazards Lab at Kent State University purchased the Petrifilm plates.