A multilevel analysis of basic water availability in Ethiopia using 2016 demographic health survey

Drinking water is one of life's most basic need, and people all around the developing world confront irregular water supplies. Still, more than one billion people globally do not have secure water supply and these leads to increasing the risk of death and incurring large costs in the prevention of water-borne diseases. There are limited knowledge on actual water availability in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was aimed determining basic water availability and its associated factors in Ethiopia. This research used 2016 Ethiopian demographic health survey data. Because of the hierarchical and clustering nature of the data, a mixed effect multilevel logistic regression model was used. In this study, the prevalence of basic drinking water availability in Ethiopia is 51.16% (95% CI 50.04-52.27%). Based on the analysis result, the household head age between 46 and 65 [AOR = 4.08, 95% CI 1.64-10.17], household heads having middle-income level (AOR = 1.22, 95% CI 1.00-1.50), being rural communities [AOR = 4.32, 95% CI 3.07-9.57] and large central regions (AOR = 2.08, 95% CI 1.17-3.68) were significant factors. The magnitude of basic drinking water availability among households in Ethiopia is low. Exploring alternative water sources is important to reduce water interruptions.