One in Four Still Lacks Access to Safe Drinking Water

Despite the progress made over the past decade, 2.1 billion people around the world still lacked access to safe drinking water in 2024, according to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. This puts them at a heightened risk of disease and deeper social exclusion.

As the following chart shows, major gaps persist in access to safely managed drinking water around the world, with Sub-Saharan Africa faring the worst last year. Access was particularly low in the Central African Republic and Chad, which both reported a lack of access to safely managed drinking water for 93 percent of their respective populations in 2024. The term is defined by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme as "drinking water from an improved source which is located on premises, available when needed and free from fecal and priority chemical contamination."

In Asia, several countries also reported more than half of their populations going without access to safe water, including Indonesia (69.5 percent without access), Pakistan (55 percent) and the Philippines (51.5 percent). In Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico had the worst rate at 57 percent, while in Europe, Albania reported 29 percent lacking coverage. According to the WHO/UNICEF, groups facing significant disparities included people living in low-income countries as well as in rural communities, children and minority ethnic and indigenous groups, as those living in areas considered fragile contexts, saw a 38 percentage point difference in coverage of safely managed drinking water compared to the global average.

According to the report, 31 countries had universal access to safely managed services by 2024, with this figure forecast to rise to 38 by 2030.