Abstract:
Over the last 80 years, since the first report of the League of Nations Health Organization on
Water Supply and Sewage Treatment in 1936, various steps have been taken to transform the
global water supply and sanitation status. The most recent ones are the effort to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and formation of the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) led by the United Nations in 2015. By 2015, 181 countries had achieved at least 75%
basic water supply coverage while only 154 countries achieved the same percentage in sanitation
coverage. In absolute figures, the global population without basic water supply and basic
sanitation services was 2.1 million and 2.3 billion (70% in rural areas) respectively by 2015,
showing that the sanitation gap is nearly 2.5 times greater than that of water supply. One of the
indicators that shows the absence of basic sanitation services is open defecation.
