National Drinking Water Quality Management Framework for Ghana 2015.

The National Drinking Water Quality Management Framework is composed by six components as follows: Commitment to water quality management (Component 1) consisting of four subcomponents: 1) Health based targets; 2) Collaboration with stakeholder; 3) Policy and regulatory requirement; 4) Individual organizational drinking water quality policy. Water supply system analysis and management “Water Safety Plans” (Component 2); Validation and Verification of Water Safety Plans (Component 3); Application to Specific Water Supplies (Component 4); Management of Incidents and Emergencies (Component 5) and Supporting programs (Component 6).
Health-based targets are measurable health, water quality, or performance objectives that are established based on a judgment of safety and on risk assessments of waterborne hazards. World Health Organization recommends National drinking water standards must underpin such targets as benchmark for water suppliers and regulators to confirm the adequacy of existing water supply systems or the need for improvement to protect and improve drinking-water quality and consequently, human health. Following are the four distinct types of health based targets, applicable to all types of hazards and water supplies: 1. health outcome targets (e.g. tolerable burdens of disease); 2. water quality targets (e.g. numerical standards values for chemical hazards such as arsenic, fluoride etc.); 3. performance targets (e.g. log-reductions of specific pathogens); and 4. specified technology targets (e.g. application of defined treatment processes) (pag. 10).
The objective of risk assessment is to distinguish between very high and low risks so that priorities for risk management can be established. Once potential hazards and their sources and events have been identified, the level of risk associated with each hazard or event needs to be estimated. Not all hazards will require the same degree of attention, and risk estimation assists in directing attention and resources to those hazards that are most threatening (pag. 74).
Although preventive strategies are intended to prevent incidents and emergency situations from occurring, some events cannot be anticipated or controlled, or the probability of their occurring is so low that providing preventive measures would be too costly. Such events includes natural disasters such as floods, drought, earthquake, and accidental failure of water supply system, and man-made incidents, for example catchment chemical spills and bacteriological contamination, can significantly disrupt and impact on the quality of water services thus posing a significant health risk to consumers (pag. 54). Other considerations for ensuring the reliability of water treatment systems include designing equipment and facilities to withstand natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes and flooding) and providing backup systems for emergency use (e.g. alternative power generation). Consideration of these factors during the design phase will reduce the risk that equipment failures will cause major disruptions in service (pag. 64).