The finding, which suggests that more than half of the world's population is without clean and accessible water, puts a spotlight on gaps in basic health data and raises questions about which estimate better reflects reality.
'There's an urgent need for the situation to change,' says Esther Greenwood, a water researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology in Dübendorf and an author on the Science paper.
We really lack data on drinking-water quality,' Greenwood says. Today, water-quality data exist for only about half of the global population.
In 2015, the UN created its Sustainable Development Goals to improve human welfare, aiming to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030.
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