Drinking Water Quality Surveillance for Public Health Officers Training Course

Course overview

Public health officers are expected to detect unsafe drinking-water conditions before they become outbreaks, advise water suppliers and local authorities with defensible evidence, and communicate risk without causing unnecessary alarm. In practice, surveillance data may be incomplete, laboratory results delayed, sanitary inspection findings inconsistently recorded, and responsibilities split across health, water, environment, and emergency teams. This course equips officers to build and operate a routine drinking-water quality surveillance system that connects field observations, sampling results, health intelligence, and regulatory action.

Participants learn to translate WHO drinking-water quality guidance into practical surveillance plans for piped supplies, boreholes, protected springs, water kiosks, tanker supply, and household storage. They develop risk-based sampling schedules; conduct sanitary inspections; select microbiological, physical, and chemical parameters; interpret E. coli, turbidity, free residual chlorine, nitrate, fluoride, and conductivity results; and distinguish operational failures from public-health incidents. The course also covers data-quality checks, threshold setting, trend analysis, outbreak signals, corrective-action notices, and escalation pathways under Water Safety Plan principles.

Delivery combines instructor-led technical sessions with realistic public-health scenarios, sampling-plan workshops, Excel-based analysis, and cross-agency response exercises. Participants work from a supplied surveillance dataset and sanitary inspection case file, then produce a Drinking Water Quality Surveillance Action Pack: a risk-prioritised sampling matrix, inspection checklist, results dashboard, incident decision tree, and 90-day implementation plan suitable for adaptation to their jurisdiction. The course is particularly valuable for officers responsible for surveillance, environmental health inspections, outbreak preparedness, rural water monitoring, or regulatory reporting.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Design a risk-based drinking-water surveillance plan covering source, treatment, distribution, point of collection, and household storage.
• Conduct sanitary inspections using structured hazard observation and risk-scoring methods for piped and non-piped water supplies.
• Select microbiological, physical, chemical, and operational parameters using WHO guideline values and local risk evidence.
• Develop statistically defensible sampling frequencies, locations, sample sizes, and repeat-sampling triggers.
• Interpret E. coli, turbidity, free residual chlorine, nitrate, fluoride, and conductivity results against action thresholds.
• Build an Excel surveillance dashboard that identifies non-compliance, trends, geographic clusters, and overdue corrective actions.
• Apply an incident decision tree to classify water-quality events, issue public-health advice, and coordinate escalation.
• Produce a 90-day Drinking Water Quality Surveillance Action Pack for implementation in a defined service area.

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Public Health Officers — who lead drinking-water surveillance, inspection, and risk communication in their assigned jurisdictions
• Environmental Health Practitioners — who inspect water sources and premises and need evidence-based corrective-action procedures
• Water Quality Surveillance Officers — who collect, validate, analyse, and report compliance data from multiple supplies
• District Health Managers — who must prioritise limited monitoring resources and coordinate outbreak prevention actions
• WASH Programme Officers — who oversee rural or humanitarian water services and need to link field monitoring to public-health risk
• Laboratory and Public Health Data Officers — who support result interpretation, quality assurance, and surveillance reporting

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical familiarity with drinking-water systems, environmental health inspection, WASH programming, laboratory reporting, or public-health surveillance. They should understand basic concepts such as contamination pathways, microbial indicators, disinfection, and routine data recording. Confidence using spreadsheets for sorting, filtering, and simple formulas is useful because exercises use Microsoft Excel; participants do not need advanced statistics, laboratory analyst certification, GIS expertise, or prior Water Safety Plan leadership experience. This is an intermediate course: complete beginners will benefit more after first gaining foundational knowledge of water treatment and environmental health practice.

Training methodology

The course uses short technical briefings followed by applied work with inspection forms, laboratory result sheets, service-area maps, and incident logs. Participants assess a simulated district containing piped networks, boreholes, and small community supplies; design sampling routes; score sanitary risks; and analyse results in Microsoft Excel. Facilitated case discussions examine contamination events, chlorine-loss complaints, and suspected waterborne disease clusters. Group work requires participants to negotiate actions across health, utility, laboratory, and local-government roles. The final session converts course outputs into a jurisdiction-specific 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Public-health surveillance foundations

• Drinking-water surveillance roles and regulatory accountability
• WHO drinking-water quality framework and health-based targets
• Water supply system mapping from catchment to consumer
• Contamination pathways and vulnerable population profiling
• Surveillance versus operational monitoring and compliance testing
• Water Safety Plan principles for public-health officers
• Surveillance objectives, indicators, and reporting lines

Workshop: Participants map a local-style water supply system and produce a surveillance responsibility matrix identifying health, utility, laboratory, and local-government roles.

Day 2: Risk-based inspection and sampling design

• Sanitary inspection forms for piped, borehole, spring, and tanker supplies
• Hazard identification at source, treatment, storage, and distribution points
• Risk scoring and prioritisation of water supplies
• Sampling point selection and representative sample collection
• Sampling frequency, sample size, and seasonal monitoring design
• Chain-of-custody documentation and sample preservation requirements
• Field quality controls including blanks, duplicates, and calibration checks

Workshop: Participants complete a sanitary inspection case file and produce a risk-ranked sampling schedule for a mixed urban and rural service area.

Day 3: Water-quality parameters and result interpretation

• E. coli as a faecal contamination indicator
• Turbidity and disinfection performance interpretation
• Free residual chlorine testing and distribution-system decay
• Nitrate and fluoride health-risk assessment
• pH, conductivity, and aesthetic parameter interpretation
• WHO guideline values, operational limits, and local action thresholds
• Repeat sampling and confirmation procedures after non-compliant results

Workshop: Participants interpret a laboratory results pack, classify exceedances, and prepare a corrective-action notice for each priority supply.

Day 4: Data analysis, reporting, and incident response

• Data validation rules for field and laboratory records
• Excel tables, filters, pivot tables, and conditional formatting
• Trend analysis by supply type, location, season, and parameter
• Geographic clustering and hotspot identification
• Water-quality incident classification and escalation thresholds
• Outbreak signal integration with diarrhoeal disease surveillance
• Public-health advisories including boil-water and do-not-use notices

Workshop: Participants build an Excel surveillance dashboard and use it to brief an incident management team on a simulated E. coli cluster.

Day 5: Governance, corrective action, and implementation

• Corrective-action plans for source, treatment, distribution, and household risks
• Supplier engagement and evidence-based enforcement conversations
• Risk communication for communities, institutions, and political leaders
• Laboratory quality assurance and result turnaround monitoring
• Routine surveillance reports and management review meetings
• Resource prioritisation using risk and population exposure
• Ninety-day implementation planning and performance measures

Workshop: Participants assemble and peer-review their Drinking Water Quality Surveillance Action Pack, including a 90-day plan and incident decision tree.

Tools & standards covered

WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, WHO Water Safety Plan Manual, Microsoft Excel, Epi Info

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions