Web applications for of drinking water and bathing quality control data management in Turkey

The Turkish Ministry of Health (MoH) is in Turkey the national authority for the implementation and enforcement of the Drinking Water and Bathing Water Directive in Turkey.

The twinning project TR-04-IB-EN-04 (May 2006, June 2008) coordinated by the IOWater aimed to develop exchange of experience between French ministry of Health and Turkish ministry of Health on the implementation of these directives.

Among its various activities, it included a specific component aiming to develop a first information system facilitating data management and reporting for the Bathing and Drinking Water Directives.

Three main applications were developed:
- one for the drinking water control data management and reporting
- one for the bathing water control data management and reporting
- another one to facilitate the administration of these 2 applications (access, right management, multilingual aspects, …)

These Web database applications were tested on 3 pilots’ regions (Ankara, Antalya, Balikesir), organising data collection on 2 years 2005/2006 with the corresponding provincial directorates.

These 3 applications are now operational on a Web server of the Ministry of Health (ex: http://sukalite.saglik.gov.tr/watermanagement/drinking/login.php )

Its use showed that, data collection, report production and information dissemination can be organised efficiently through the use of Internet, respecting confidentiality of the information, with a direct participation of each actors at each level: local actors (Presidency Health Groups, Health Houses, …), provincial actors (Provincial directorate, labs), national actor (Ministry of Heath).