Overview of WHO’s work on water safety: Focus on risk management including the updated small supplies publications

Small water supplies have a critical role to play in providing safe drinking-water services to a large proportion of the global population. Improving safe service delivery from small supplies therefore represents an important opportunity to improve health outcomes and realize other social, environmental and economic benefits. Given the challenges that tend to set small supplies apart from other supplies, special regulatory consideration and external support programmes are needed to drive and sustain improvement.

In this seminar an overview of WHO’s forthcoming Guidelines for drinking-water quality: on small water supplies (the Guidelines) and sanitary inspection packages will be provided. The Guidelines aim to support progressive improvement in access to safe drinking-water for users of small supplies. The Guidelines present proven best practices for drinking-water quality regulations and standards, risk management approaches (water safety planning and sanitary inspections) and surveillance programmes that balance public health protection and resource realities.

The seminar also provides an opportunity to learn about recent and upcoming updates to WHO’s flagship normative guidance on water safety, the Guidelines for drinking-water quality and WHO’s broader recommendations on water supplies in order to accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal target 6.1 on safely managed drinking-water services for all, from the recently published WHO UNICEF World Bank report, State of the world’s drinking water.