Access
Since arsenic was discovered in Bangladeshi groundwater in 1993, the share of population with access to safe drinking water had to be adjusted downward. According to the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation of UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), access to an improved source of water supply increased only slightly from 77% in 1990 to 81% in 2010, whereas coverage of improved sanitation increased from 39% to 46% during the same period.
Estimates of access to an improved source of water supply is greatly affected by the presence of arsenic in groundwater, which is estimated to affect 27% of all wells and is subtracted from the figures obtained by solely measuring the level of access to infrastructure. Without taking into account the presence of arsenic, 99% of the urban population and 97% of the rural population actually had access to an improved source of water supply according to the Demographic and Health Survey of 2004, which is an unusually high level of access for a low-income country. In urban areas, access is broken down as follows:
- 23% piped inside dwelling
- 8% piped outside dwelling
- 68% tubewells
In rural areas the breakdown is:
- Less than 0,6% piped inside and outside dwelling
- 96% tubewells
- 1% dug wells
- More than 2% ponds, lakes and rivers
Rainwater harvesting, although practised in Bangladesh, was not included in the survey. The official figures of the Joint Monitoring Program, taking into account the presence of arsenic, are as follows:
| Access to Water and Sanitation in the Bangladesh (2010) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urban (28% of the population) |
Rural (72% of the population) |
Total | ||
| Water | Broad definition | 85% | 80% | 81% |
| House connections | 20% | 1% | 6% | |
| Sanitation | Broad definition | 57% | 55% | 56% |
| Sewerage | n/a | n/a | n/a | |
In 2005, the Bangladeshi Minister for Local Government and Rural Development presented a National Sanitation Strategy that ambitiously aimed to reach universal access to sanitation by 2010. Without mentioning community-led total sanitation by name (see under innovative approaches below), the strategy incorporates important elements of this approach, such as an emphasis on participation by the whole community and the principle of not subsidizing hardware except for the "hardcore poor".
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In Bangladesh
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