Safe drinking water is critical to human health and development. In rural sub-Saharan Africa, most improved water sources are boreholes with handpumps; studies suggest that up to one third of these handpumps are non-functional at any given time. This work presents findings from a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from 1,470 water sources in 570 communities in the rural Greater Afram Plains (GAP) region of Ghana; one of the largest studies of its kind.
The study found that wells were significantly more likely to be functioning if the community had both a local water committee and fee collection system in place.