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4. Inequalities in access to basic services
Healthy housing and living conditions are strongly affected by access to drinking-water, sanitation and energy supply services. Access to and use of these basic services depends on several variables, including building features and installations, local authorities’ capacities to provide such services in an adequate and reliable manner, and the costs of these services to the household.
The United Nations explicitly recognizes the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledges that clean drinking-water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights. SDG 6 is to ensure that no one is excluded from access to equitable and safely managed drinkingwater and sanitation services, which provide a requirement for healthy lives and well-being.
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Although access to energy is not formally defined as a human right, it is of equal concern and has also been included as a separate goal of the sustainable development agenda (SDG 7: affordable and clean energy). A wide range of international and national campaigns and frameworks exist to ensure that all people, irrespective of location and socioeconomic status, have access to sustainable, non-polluting and affordable fuels. Access to safe drinking-water, adequate sanitation services and clean and affordable energy are not, however, assured in many countries around the world: they remain public health as well as equity challenges in the WHO European Region. This section provides an overview of health-relevant inequalities for three indicators:
• inequalities in access to basic drinking-water services; • inequalities in access to basic sanitation services; and • inequalities in energy poverty.
As the data on drinking-water services and sanitation services are provided through the same monitoring instrument and use the same methodology, they are presented in one section. For energy poverty, various data sources are compiled to present inequalities related to energy cost and affordability and to highlight the inequalities in relation to the use of harmful energy sources such as solid fuels.
