Sanitation Updates

Improving water supply and sanitation in poor countries is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and reducing poverty. What lessons to help meet this challenge can be learnt from a recent survey of water and sanitation in Kazakhstan?

Research from the University of Nottingham in the UK and the United Nations Development Programme in Kazakhstan reports the findings of a water and sanitation survey carried out in Kazakhstan in 2005.

Target ten of Goal seven of the MDGs is to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, compared with the situation in 1990. Access to clean water and proper sanitation will also be central to meeting MDG targets on reducing poverty and infant mortality.

However, concerns have been raised over the way Target 10 is measured and monitored. The researchers use information from the Kazakhstan survey, which was designed to assess the current level of access to clean water and to provide a baseline for Target 10, to explore some of these concerns.

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