Description

Rural safe water coverage as defined by the Directorate of Water Development, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda.

Data used in maps 3, 4, 5, 6 of ""Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda."" from Health Planning Department, Ministry of Health, Uganda; Directorate of Water Development, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda; Uganda Bureau of Statistics; International Livestock Research Institute; and World Resources Institute. 2009.

The Directorate of Water Development (DWD) is using proxy measures to estimate access to safe drinking water supplies in Uganda. The existing data collection and monitoring eff orts do not permit DWD to physically measure for the whole country the percentage of people within 1.5 kilometers (rural areas) and 0.2 kilometers (urban areas) of an improved water source. For rural areas, DWD assumes a fi xed number of users per source as follows: protected spring (200 persons), shallow well with hand pump (300 persons), deep borehole with hand pump (300 persons), gravity flow scheme or other piped water supply tap (150 persons), and rain water harvesting tank (3 persons for a tank of less than 10,000 liters and 6 persons for a tank greater than 10,000 liters).

DWD relies on an inventory of existing safe drinking water sources (based on a national survey and annual reporting) to calculate for each subcounty the total number of people served by all the improved sources. This number is then divided by the total subcounty population (as projected by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics) to obtain the share of the subcounty population with access to an improved water source. DWD caps each subcounty share at a maximum coverage rate of 95 percent to ensure that no subcounty is serving more people than its total population. Coverage rates shown in this publication assume that all sources are fully functional.