Who is being left behind? An analysis of improved drinking water and basic sanitation access in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta

The global community has made tremendous strides in providing access to water and sanitation in recent decades. Driven by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which sought to halve the proportion of the global population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, billions of people now have access to these basic human rights. As the global community works to implement the next generation of development goals, the Sustainable Development Goals, it is critical to determine how unserved populations can be reached. To investigate indicators of water and sanitation access, surveys were conducted among 300 households in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. Households with and without access to improved water or basic sanitation were identified and data from these surveys were subjected to multiple regression analyses to identify household characteristics that correlate with access. It was found that for households without access to either water or sanitation, three variables were statistically significant predictors of access: distance to local government, household floor material, and the gender of the household water manager. Predictors of access to water and sanitation were evaluated separately. This integrated water and sanitation case study draws several implications for this next phase of SDG development programming.