In Tajikistan, WHO is in the lead of the project “Small and safe: scaling-up water safety planning and effective water quality monitoring in rural Tajikistan”. The project aims at supporting long term uptake and implementation of risk-based safe management approaches in rural areas and strengthening government capacities in delivering effective drinking-water quality surveillance. 
The project focus is on five rayon’s in Tajikistan: Varzob, Fayzerbad, Aini, Danghara and Farkhor.

Harold van den Berg (RIVM) is contributing to the following goals of the project:

1. Development of effective and sustainable strategies to drinking-water quality monitoring in the five project rayon’s;
2. Improvement of laboratory equipment of Sanitary Epidemiological Services (SESs) in the five project rayon’s to enable routine analysis of core health-relevant water quality parameters for strengthening the water quality monitoring

For this purpose, Van den Berg visited the five SES district laboratories in these rayon’s to make an inventory of the current practices, equipment and methodologies. On April 5, after visiting all laboratories, a meeting was held in Dushanbe to discuss the minimal set of parameters to be tested and what capacity (equipment and training) was needed. Based on this meeting a suggestion of parameters, materials and media was made and is currently purchased.

In July, Harold van den Berg will give a practical training on water quality monitoring to the laboratory technicians and head of the five district laboratories.