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, food hygiene, and menstrual hygiene management (see Menstrual Health).

Menstrual health refers to ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in relation to the menstrual cycle’.

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 2018, a progress update in 2020 with a special focus on COVID-19, and a data update in 2022 with additional thematic analyses on preparing schools for future pandemics and providing disability-inclusive WASH services in schools. The 2024 progress update presents estimates for the period 2015-2023, with a special focus on menstrual health.

In 2019 the JMP published a global baseline report  with harmonized estimates for water, sanitation, hand hygiene, health care waste management, and environmental cleaning (WASH) services in health care facilities. In 2020 the global database was updated and the JMP contributed to the WHO/UNICEF Global progress report on WASH in health care facilities: fundamentals first. In 2022, the JMP published a global progress update with a special focus on WASH and infection prevention and control (IPC). In 2024, the JMP published a data update with a special focus on WASH and primary health care (PHC). Explore the interactive database here, download country files here, and access regional snapshot files here. 

The JMP uses a standard classification and estimation method to compare progress across countries, regions and the world.  Download country files and create custom graphs for households, schools or health care facilities from the JMP data portal.