The Philippine Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target on access to safe water supply and access to sanitary toilet facility is to ensure that, by 2015, 86.8 percent of the families in the country will have access to safe water supply and 83.8 percent will have access to sanitary toilet facility.

 

Access to safe water supply and sanitary toilet facility are essential to good health, clean environment, growth and development. Safe water supply and good sanitation can prevent common waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, etc.

 

According to the results of the 2014 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS), 85.5 percent of the 22.7 million families have access to safe water supply or water coming from community water system piped into dwelling, yard or plot, public tap, and protected well. The remaining 14.5 percent of families use unsafe source of water from unprotected well, spring, river, pond, lake, rain water, and tanker truck or peddler. Results show that the national MDG target is likely to be achieved by 2015, however, there are observed disparities among regions (Figure 1).  Only seven regions have proportion of families having access to safe water supply at par or higher than the national average ranging from 84.7 to 98.9 percent, namely: Caraga (84.7 %), Region VIII (86.5 %), NCR (90.3%), Region I (90.7 %), Region IVA (90.9 %), Region II (96.0 %), and Region III (98.9 %).

 

 

The results of the survey also show that 94.1 percent of families have access to sanitary toilet facility (Figure 2). Sanitary toilet facility refers to flush toilet (either owned or shared) and close pit. Six percent of families still use open pit, drop or overhang, and pail system. Except for families in Region VIII (83.5 %) which were devastated by typhoon Yolanda, all regions had successfully achieved the MDG target with proportions of families having sanitary toilet ranging from 84.7 percent in ARMM to 99.1 percent in Regions I, II, III, and IVA. 

 

 

Based on per capita family income, families were grouped into top 70 percent and bottom 30 percent strata. Nationwide, about 27.4 percent at the bottom 30 percent families use unsafe water source and 14.1 percent used unsanitary toilet.