Throughout history, water has been crucial for sustaining life, both for humans and other organisms, making it an absolute necessity for life. Unfortunately, there are some areas of the country where people do not have access to quality and sufficient potable water or rely on water sources that are contaminated with toxins, suspended solids, pathogens, or disease vectors.

Drinking this polluted water or using it to cook can lead to both chronic and acute illnesses, which is one of the major causes of suffering and even death for a considerable number of people. Therefore, reducing waterborne diseases with developing safe water sources, setting and implementing drinking water standards has become a major goal for sustainable public health throughout EAC Partner States and particularly in our country.

Nowadays, the demand of quality water is remarkably increasing and this has attracted various actors (individuals, companies and public services) investing in treatment and water trading business across East African Countries as well as from other countries.

To ensure that traded or supplied water meet the required quality and in order to avoid any technical barrier to trade; EAC Partner States, through East Africa Standards Committee (EASC) have set harmonized standards on three kinds of drinking water. 

From 2014 these standards were implemented across the region and the experience shared by numerous actors showed that there was an urgent need to review the standards to align them with the current worldwide technology, make them consistent and remove any ambiguity so that ensure water quality destined to human consumption is met.

The East African Standardization Committee on Drinking water (EASC/TC081) has now undertaken the revision of East African standards on Drinking water. The Committee whose secretariat is held by Rwanda (through RSB) met in May, from 02nd to 05th in Mombasa and January, 2018 in Nairobi/Kenya to review the old versions of drinking water standards (2014 versions) and resolve some inconsistences found. The committee came up with the below updated versions:

• 1. EAS 12: 2018, Potable water — Specifications
• 2. EAS 13: 2018, Mineral waters — Specifications; and
• 3. EAS 153: 2018, Packaged drinking water — Specifications

New versions of drinking water standards were prepared in line with other international guidelines published by WHO and Codex Alimentarius, and emphasized on the importance of hygiene and water safety plan. Additionally, based on the specificity of the EAC region, some missing chemicals and microbial contaminants parameters have been added due to the likelihood of their presence in water.

The above Standards on drinking water are now tailored to be widely and easily applicable for public water systems (tap water), packaged drinking water and for natural drinking water; in order to ensure that drinking water is safe and free from contaminants and any harmful substance. They are now tools that can be used by regulators, inspectors and drinking water producers to assess the quality of drinking water and the efficiency of water treatment systems.