Monitoring

Drinking water services refers to the accessibility, availability and quality of the main source used by households for drinking, cooking, personal hygiene and other domestic uses

Sanitation services refer to the management of excreta from the facilities used by individuals, through emptying and transport of excreta for treatment and eventual discharge or reuse.​​​​​​

Hygiene refers to the conditions and practices that help maintain health and prevent spread of disease including handwashing, menstrual hygiene management and food hygiene.

Tracking inequalities in access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene is essential for achieving universal access and ensuring progressive realisation of the human rights to water and sanitation.

The JMP expanded its databases to include WASH in schools and published harmonized national, regional and global baseline estimates in August 2018. The 2020 update report includes national, regional and global progress from 2015 to 2019 and a special focus on the implications for ensuring the safety of students and school staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019 the JMP published harmonized baseline estimates for water, sanitation, hand hygiene, health care waste management, and environmental cleaning (WASH) services in health care facilities. The global baseline report was accompanied by a report published by WHO and UNICEF describing practical steps that countries were taking to ensure universal access to quality care. 

In 2020 the global database was updated, and the JMP contributed a chapter to the WHO/UNICEF Global progress report on WASH in health care facilities: fundamentals first. The report found that:

A quarter of health care facilities lacked basic water services in 2019, exposing 1.8 billion people, including health care workers and patients, to greater risk of infections.  One in three health care facilities did not have hand hygiene facilities at the point of care. Ten percent of health care facilities had no sanitation service. One third did not segregate waste safely. Most countries in the world do not have sufficient data to report on basic WASH services in health care facilities. Filling data gaps and setting baselines should be an immediate priority.

The global database will be updated again in 2022.

The JMP uses a standard classification and estimation method to compare progress across countries, regions and the world.