Unimproved Drinking Water Sources

As defined by the Joint WHO & UNICEF Monitoring Programme (JMP), an unimproved drinking-water source is one that by the nature of its construction does not adequately protect the source from outside contamination, in particular with faecal matter. Unimproved drinking-water sources include: Unprotected (dug) well; unprotected spring, cart with small tank or drum; tanker truck-provided water, surface water (river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal, irrigation channel); bottled water (because of potential limits on the quantity of water available to a household through this source, not the quality).