Status of safe drinking water in the rural areas of a health unit district, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Background : In spite of numerous on-going efforts by the government of India to improve the availability and accessibility of water supply, provision of water supply still continues to be a challenge especially in rural areas. The present study intended to determine the availability and accessibility of drinking water supply system in the study population and also attempted to assess the knowledge and practice of the households about use of safe water. Methods : A cross-sectional study was carried out in Cheyyar taluk which comes under the Cheyyar health unit district of Tamil Nadu, India. The samples were drawn using the Stratified random sampling technique. From each strata, 20% of villages were selected randomly and in each village, 10% of the households were identified as the sampling unit. Thus, the study was carried out in 74 villages and 1515 households. Results showed that the water supply system was available and accessible to all the villages in the entire study area. The only lacunae observed were that people were not storing, using and purifying water in the sanitary way. Conclusion: Our study also supports the results of WHO/UNICEF joint monitoring programme for water supply and sanitation (JMP) which shows we have met the millennium development goal (MDG) set for availability and accessibility of water. Next step would be to concentrate on filling the gap in knowledge regarding safe water storage, usage and purification.